Russian Journal of Communication (RJC) is an international peer-reviewed academic journal that pu... more Russian Journal of Communication (RJC) is an international peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes theoretical and empirical papers and essays and books reviews that advance an understanding of communication in, with and about Russia. The journal welcomes original theoretical, empirical, critical, comparative, and historical studies and is open to all methodological perspectives. The journal is published in cooperation with the Russian Communication Association (RCA) and the North American Russian Communication Association (NARCA). For more information about RCA, visit http://www.russcomm.ru (Russian language version) or www.russcomm.ru/eng (English language version). For more information about RJC and other academic journals published by Marquette Books LLC, visit www.MarquetteJournals.org. For more information about subscribing or submitting manuscripts, see the information at the end of this journal.
The circulation of allusions, resonances, and emotional propositions connected with the marketing... more The circulation of allusions, resonances, and emotional propositions connected with the marketing of native products in the Russian Federation today is an important source of information about projections of national identity. Of particular interest is tobacco and alcohol advertising. A ban on access to television means that tobacco companies spend enormous resources on the blanket coverage of urban areas with billboards and, increasingly, on the routes of communication between those areas. 1 The ephemeral nature of these advertisements, and their relatively recent appearance in Russia, means that they are an underutilized resource in the analysis of post-Communist cultural changes. Since the recovery of the economy after 1995, a large number of specifically Russian products (leaving aside, for the moment, whether the concerns that produce them are Russian-owned or not), as opposed to generic, or multinational brands have been marketed on a scale comparable to that in other European countries. However, it is only since the devaluation of the ruble after the economic crisis of 1998 that the Russian advertising industry proper can be said to have taken off. The rapid switch off of imports after the ruble crash proved a perfect opportunity for Russian companies to respond to consumer demand with cheaper home-produced products. With the exit of multinationals in large numbers the growing advertising industry was quickly transformed into a machine for promoting Russian and quasi-Russian products. The proportion of global products 1 According to recent Gallup figures (2002) the quantity of street advertisements for tobacco products in Russia is twice as large as that of any other product group. Data available from http://www.tns-global.ru/rus/data/monitoring/ outdoor/_2002_g_/by_category.wbp. The figures also give expenditure on street tobacco advertising as $26 million; the next highest expenditure on advertising products was the brewing industry, spending a mere $9 million. In late 2004 discussion began in government about the restricted access to television for beer advertisers.
This article analyses three aspects of working-class life in Russia that add to the debate about ... more This article analyses three aspects of working-class life in Russia that add to the debate about global working-class responses to disenfranchisement and ‘crisis’. Firstly, it highlights how traditionally workers have been atomised as a group due to the demotivating effects of postcommunist transition itself. Nonetheless, there remains a coherence of shared values and grievances rooted in the still-living memory of the communist-era ‘social contract’, and workers’ current experience of harsh anti-labour industrial relations and state indifference. Thirdly, despite seemingly no outlet in oppositional politics, there are signs of resistance, if not revolt. These range from the informal ‘black’ economy as ‘exit’ from formal work, smallscale labour protests and the organising of new independent labour unions in transnational companies, and the rising political consciousness of working-class voters who look for any ‘alternative’ to the ruling party – including the popular-nationalist far...
Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 2019
Abstract:This article argues for moving beyond existing conceptualizations of the "informal ... more Abstract:This article argues for moving beyond existing conceptualizations of the "informal economy" that construe informality as a distinct phenomenon with more or less clearly defined borders. Instead, it proposes an "imbricated" perspective where informality and informal economic practices closely relate to other forms of informal organization within networks and political and civic structures. Specifically, the article addresses the issue of how to conceptualize and justify such broader understanding of informality. To do so, it develops three interrelated meanings of "imbrication"—relating to labor and economic activities; the "deregulation" or fuzziness of state practices and bureaucratic rule-making; and the complexity of economic and social reasonings by agents themselves—to explain action. In each case, I offer brief empirical examples from my field research in provincial Russia.
Based on long-term ethnography on working-class men, this chapter investigates how global changes... more Based on long-term ethnography on working-class men, this chapter investigates how global changes in production and labour inflect working-class Russian masculinity. These changes include challenges to traditional Russian factory work by the informal economy and transnational corporations. Performative masculinity through consumption and do-it-yourself (car ownership, mechanical repair and tinkering) is subject to change. Automobility is emblematic of uneasy social mobility and engagement with neoliberal governmentality. It marks how masculinity intersects with both aspiration and stubborn retrenchments of more traditional working-class identities. The machinic assemblage (in Lazzarato’s terms) of male, worker and automobility is dynamic. It recombines new subjectivation in neoliberal work, as worker, as man, and in relation to that arch-symbol of the machine–human interface, the car.
Despite the shared history of socialist welfare state adaptation, there is consensus among schola... more Despite the shared history of socialist welfare state adaptation, there is consensus among scholars that Central and Eastern European (CEE) welfare states do not conform to either a putative post-socialist welfare state type or to Esping-Andersen's (1990) welfare regime typology developed for advanced capitalist welfare states (Deacon 2000; Fenger 2007; Aidukaite 2009; Inglot 2009). This is not surprising considering that welfare states in CEE are but a few years younger than their Western neighbours (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008; Inglot 2008; Mares and Carnes 2009) and that their historical evolution-despite their Bismarckian foundations, the homogenizing influence of the soviet model and the emergency, ad hoc and inconsistent institutional adjustments during the first two decades of post-socialism-has been as complex and diverse as that of their advanced capitalist counterparts (Inglot 2008, 2009; Cook 2010). This diversity is observable not only in terms of variations in the salience of institutional legacies from different historical periods across welfare domains, the timing, dynamics and direction of welfare reforms after the dissolution of state socialism and welfare state size, but also variations in the resulting architectures of mixed economies of welfare across policy domains and in the structure of inequalities and social outcomes. We agree, therefore, with Cerami's (2009, p. 51) assessment that welfare states in the European post-socialist and post-soviet space are best understood as 'unique hybrids', moreover, likely on diverging paths of development (see also Cook 2010; Deacon and Standing 1993; Orenstein and Haas 2002; Potucek 2008; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). As such, these welfare states may be grouped together at best only on the most general grounds and without sensitivity to differences in magnitude and kind. The shared Bismarckian and soviet-inspired institutional legacies are one broad similarity which might invite arguments of greater similarity than dissimilarity, although Inglot (2008) convincingly outlines the institutional variations that persisted despite these. The experience of welfare state adjustment during the 1990s, characterized by ad hoc, emergency institutional and policy transformations (Nunberg 1999; Deacon 2000, p. 149; Sotiropoulos and Pop 2007; Inglot 2009) and a highly volatile, cyclical expand-then-retrench, stop-and-go reform process during this period (Sotiropoulos et al. 2003; Inglot 2009; Szikra and Tomka 2009; Cook 2010) may also be cited as another shared feature of CEE welfare states, although again, scholars have highlighted variations certainly in degree (see Cerami and Vanhuysse 2009). Those emphasizing similarities over differences could also cite a propensity towards cushioning social policy adjustments in the early stages of post-socialist welfare state reform, although selective in scope, followed by path-departing institutional innovations during the late
On June 8, Moscow's Mayor announced the early cancellation of self-isolation. It had featured dig... more On June 8, Moscow's Mayor announced the early cancellation of self-isolation. It had featured digital passes and "Moscow walks" by strict schedule according to address. Transport cards for the risk group 65+ were unblocked. Traffic jams, urban noise, and children's voices returned. Taxi drivers no longer asked for QR codes from passengers. Hairdressers reopened , benches and playgrounds were freed from striped tape, a visible materialization of the lockdown city-scape. Fig.1. (Post)lockdown cityscape. Image by Galina Orlova
Workers form the exemplary class of economic, social, and psychological ‘losers’ of the postcommu... more Workers form the exemplary class of economic, social, and psychological ‘losers’ of the postcommunist transition.
This article draws on ethnographic work carried out since 2009 on workers and automotive unions i... more This article draws on ethnographic work carried out since 2009 on workers and automotive unions in Kaluga, Russia. The contrast between secure and temporary contract workers in foreign-owned car plants is a focus of activism among emerging alternative trade unions in Kaluga. Workers in both the 'new' production-scape of high-tech foreign-owned automotive assembly, and the 'old' low-tech Soviet production contexts articulate similar interpretive understandings of what constitutes 'precarious' work: lack of autonomy and the lack of a 'social wage' generally in labour. We interrogate this through in-depth interviews with unionised and non-unionised workers in the auto sector and other industries locally. A divide emerges between workers who go to work for the car plants, and those who remain in Soviet-types firms and who reject the labour relations model that it offers and which they understand to contrast with a traditional 'paternalistic' Russian model. 1. TNCs, labour and precariousness in Russia As transnational corporations (TNCs) like AstraZeneca, Toyota, Lotte, Samsung, Nestle, Volkswagen, Volvo, Continental, Peugeot and many others have appeared in the Kaluga region bordering Moscow, a new union movement has developed in the automotive industry, and in associated suppliers. Activists and workers have mobilised their labour power to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with management, despite the existence of unfavourable labour legislation. Firms' inexperience of industrial relations in Russia as well as the ongoing need for cheap labour often works to the advantage of younger workers who seek higher wages and job security in these globally-connected firms. New plants are often ripe for negotiation of power relations with management, unfettered by established 'Soviet-style' trade union cultures and practices. For the alternative trade unions this allows for mostly uncontested entry to plants. This is because, while superficially prominent nationally in the nominally corporatist structure of the economy, the real role of traditional unions is 'largely decorative and shallow' (Gimpelson & Kapeliushnikov, 2011, p. 17). In the car plant in which we carried out our research-owned by Volkswagen-the alternative trade union,
This article compares industrial relations in production sites in Slovakia and Russia owned by a ... more This article compares industrial relations in production sites in Slovakia and Russia owned by a single transnational automotive firm, Volkswagen. We analyse the empirical data using a working-class power approach. In Slovakia, associational and institutional power is well developed and influenced by the model of German work councils, but structural power is weakly exercised and unions rely on non-conflictual engagement with management. In Russia, structural working-class power remains strong, but the opportunities for transforming this into lasting associational, let alone institutional power, remain limited; thus, new unions make use of unconventional methods of protest to promote worker interests.
Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2016
This article explores the main debates and works that underpin the theoretical conceptualization ... more This article explores the main debates and works that underpin the theoretical conceptualization of this special issue and documents the exponential growth of literature on informality both globally and, especially, in post-socialist spaces. In spite of this growth, informality is still relatively understudied considering how widespread and significant a phenomenon it has become. In particular, if we go beyond a merely economistic view of the phenomenon, one could argue that an understanding of informality explains a variety of social responses and the number of cases where we have been able to apply an informality framework is perhaps very telling. Debates remain too bounded by one of two paradigms: either recourse to geographic particularism or exceptionalism or ongoing debates on transition or transformation (the appropriateness of 'posting' socialism). To break with this attitude, we suggest with this special issue that study of informality needs to build into itself a middle-field theory explaining its endurance which acknowledges both specificities of social action arising from common(ish) pasts and experience of change after 1989/91 leading to translatable presents, as well as these societies' positioning as mediating sites of neocapitalism between the Global North and South, with such a theory being a key articulation of the multiple modernities thesis. Since the early 2000s, the number of articles with "informality" in the title has grown from a few thousand each year to consistently more than 15,000 (according to Google Scholar). Interestingly, if we add in the search term "postsocialism, " we observe a smooth upward curve in the number of articles returning these words in their titles from the low tens in 2000 to approximately ten times that number in the last year (271 in 2015-2016-to be precise). Clearly, a parallel process is occurring. Social scientists are finding the term informality, with all its inbuilt imprecision, more interesting and useful over time, but so too are those scholars focusing on changes in post-communist, or post-socialist societies. But this growth over more than a decade should make us cautious about complaining too much at the imprecision of both terms. Clearly, such a correlation (which implies no causation)-implies at least some synergy in looking at on the one hand non-formal
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2017
How do the 'sharing economies' relate to the long history of informal economic practices as under... more How do the 'sharing economies' relate to the long history of informal economic practices as understood in the social sciences? This article examines conceptions of the sharing economy in terms of its relation to scholarship on informality. By using two case studies of informal economic practices that originated in socialist-era societies and continue to the present day in modified forms, we critique the notion that sharing economies are significantly novel in form or logic, other than technologically. We draw attention to the variety of informal economy practices to discuss how they may be socially embedded or disembedded. The main focus on global technological leveraging of productivity and connectivity in sharing economy practices would suggest that many aspects are akin to disembedded forms of informality. Scholarship needs to address the ongoing disciplinary parallelism on prefixed 'economies'-in doing so it would provide a better contextual and theoretical understanding of 'sharing economies'.
Based on long-term fieldwork in Russia, but focusing mainly on the aftermath of the 2014 Malaysia... more Based on long-term fieldwork in Russia, but focusing mainly on the aftermath of the 2014 Malaysian airliner downing in Ukraine, this article examines the individual ethnographer and informants alike as unwilling 'diplomatic' representatives in the field. Firstly, I discuss the authoritarian political context in Russia and how it affects the notion of 'soft power' and 'public' discourse. Then I relate the familiar 'political testing' experience of researchers by informants, and 'neutrality' in field relations (Ergun and Erdemir 2010). Next, I draw on the anthropology of indirect communication to characterize 'everyday diplomacy' after the event as a particular kind of civility. I go on to examine attendant affective states of 'tension, disturbance, or jarring' (Navaro-Yashin 2012) that both threaten civility and enable it. Finally, I argue that classic ethnographic rapport-building deserves further examination in the light of the porosity of politics, the social environment and the field.
This article contributes to a comparative analysis of the meaning of citizenship for youth. Young... more This article contributes to a comparative analysis of the meaning of citizenship for youth. Young people, traditionally seen as 'incomplete' citizens in the process of transition to adulthood, possess their own everyday understanding of what it means to be a citizen in the contemporary world. Based on empirical qualitative material collected in two Russian cities, it is argued that there is a disjunction among young Russians between the ideal-typical perception of citizenship and the practical realisation of it. Particular emphasis is put on the 'emotional' understanding of citizenship by Russian youth involving the experience of particular feelings towards fellow citizens and the country.
Unhomely Presents: Trauma and Values of Endurance Among Older People We are a rubbish dump for Mo... more Unhomely Presents: Trauma and Values of Endurance Among Older People We are a rubbish dump for Moscow now, in a literal as well as fi gurative sense, I mean. On the site of the clay mining pit they've started trucking in all kinds of muck [ drian' ]. We're worried about how it will aff ect the water supply. In Soviet times under Rodomirov there was one authority [ vlast' ] for everything-the housing, the plant, the roads, and this couldn't have happened. At the same time half the town works in Moscow on the construction sites. It's such a shame. Who wants to live in a railway carriage behind barbed wire for six months at a time and never see your family? No, I will stay at the metal fabricating workshop for my measly 16,000 a month. 1 Th is is my town, my home is here. What can you do? We have enough [ nam khvataet ]. Everything is orientated to protect the big city people, but it wasn't always like that.
A Woman's Kingdom? Affect, Care and Regendering Labour We sit in Galina Vilgel'movna's kitchen ea... more A Woman's Kingdom? Affect, Care and Regendering Labour We sit in Galina Vilgel'movna's kitchen eating her borsch before she goes off for the evening shift at the Polymer workshop. Her blue-collar wage of 20,000 roubles a month ($540), 1 along with some state pension benefi ts, now has to support her retired husband, grown-up daughter Elena and her one-year-old son, as well as her senile mother. Elena is tending to little Kolya, Galina's grandson, in the next room. Galina's husband Ivan Ivanych is boring everyone about his poor tomato crop this year. 2 Since the grandson arrived he has had little time to get on his moped and tend his allotment. Th at and the poor weather have stymied his plans. Elena used to work at the kindergarten, but since having the baby she has no intention of returning to work anytime soon. Th ere is no father; as Ivan Ivanych approaches the age of 60, he now has a new role-fi lling in as babysitter and carer. Elena brings in more than 1 Th e lower dollar value indicates the falling value of the rouble over time. 2 We met these two informants in Chap. 1. In the writing of this chapter I am highly indebted to Charlie Walker for the opportunity to discuss his work.
Russian Journal of Communication (RJC) is an international peer-reviewed academic journal that pu... more Russian Journal of Communication (RJC) is an international peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes theoretical and empirical papers and essays and books reviews that advance an understanding of communication in, with and about Russia. The journal welcomes original theoretical, empirical, critical, comparative, and historical studies and is open to all methodological perspectives. The journal is published in cooperation with the Russian Communication Association (RCA) and the North American Russian Communication Association (NARCA). For more information about RCA, visit http://www.russcomm.ru (Russian language version) or www.russcomm.ru/eng (English language version). For more information about RJC and other academic journals published by Marquette Books LLC, visit www.MarquetteJournals.org. For more information about subscribing or submitting manuscripts, see the information at the end of this journal.
The circulation of allusions, resonances, and emotional propositions connected with the marketing... more The circulation of allusions, resonances, and emotional propositions connected with the marketing of native products in the Russian Federation today is an important source of information about projections of national identity. Of particular interest is tobacco and alcohol advertising. A ban on access to television means that tobacco companies spend enormous resources on the blanket coverage of urban areas with billboards and, increasingly, on the routes of communication between those areas. 1 The ephemeral nature of these advertisements, and their relatively recent appearance in Russia, means that they are an underutilized resource in the analysis of post-Communist cultural changes. Since the recovery of the economy after 1995, a large number of specifically Russian products (leaving aside, for the moment, whether the concerns that produce them are Russian-owned or not), as opposed to generic, or multinational brands have been marketed on a scale comparable to that in other European countries. However, it is only since the devaluation of the ruble after the economic crisis of 1998 that the Russian advertising industry proper can be said to have taken off. The rapid switch off of imports after the ruble crash proved a perfect opportunity for Russian companies to respond to consumer demand with cheaper home-produced products. With the exit of multinationals in large numbers the growing advertising industry was quickly transformed into a machine for promoting Russian and quasi-Russian products. The proportion of global products 1 According to recent Gallup figures (2002) the quantity of street advertisements for tobacco products in Russia is twice as large as that of any other product group. Data available from http://www.tns-global.ru/rus/data/monitoring/ outdoor/_2002_g_/by_category.wbp. The figures also give expenditure on street tobacco advertising as $26 million; the next highest expenditure on advertising products was the brewing industry, spending a mere $9 million. In late 2004 discussion began in government about the restricted access to television for beer advertisers.
This article analyses three aspects of working-class life in Russia that add to the debate about ... more This article analyses three aspects of working-class life in Russia that add to the debate about global working-class responses to disenfranchisement and ‘crisis’. Firstly, it highlights how traditionally workers have been atomised as a group due to the demotivating effects of postcommunist transition itself. Nonetheless, there remains a coherence of shared values and grievances rooted in the still-living memory of the communist-era ‘social contract’, and workers’ current experience of harsh anti-labour industrial relations and state indifference. Thirdly, despite seemingly no outlet in oppositional politics, there are signs of resistance, if not revolt. These range from the informal ‘black’ economy as ‘exit’ from formal work, smallscale labour protests and the organising of new independent labour unions in transnational companies, and the rising political consciousness of working-class voters who look for any ‘alternative’ to the ruling party – including the popular-nationalist far...
Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 2019
Abstract:This article argues for moving beyond existing conceptualizations of the "informal ... more Abstract:This article argues for moving beyond existing conceptualizations of the "informal economy" that construe informality as a distinct phenomenon with more or less clearly defined borders. Instead, it proposes an "imbricated" perspective where informality and informal economic practices closely relate to other forms of informal organization within networks and political and civic structures. Specifically, the article addresses the issue of how to conceptualize and justify such broader understanding of informality. To do so, it develops three interrelated meanings of "imbrication"—relating to labor and economic activities; the "deregulation" or fuzziness of state practices and bureaucratic rule-making; and the complexity of economic and social reasonings by agents themselves—to explain action. In each case, I offer brief empirical examples from my field research in provincial Russia.
Based on long-term ethnography on working-class men, this chapter investigates how global changes... more Based on long-term ethnography on working-class men, this chapter investigates how global changes in production and labour inflect working-class Russian masculinity. These changes include challenges to traditional Russian factory work by the informal economy and transnational corporations. Performative masculinity through consumption and do-it-yourself (car ownership, mechanical repair and tinkering) is subject to change. Automobility is emblematic of uneasy social mobility and engagement with neoliberal governmentality. It marks how masculinity intersects with both aspiration and stubborn retrenchments of more traditional working-class identities. The machinic assemblage (in Lazzarato’s terms) of male, worker and automobility is dynamic. It recombines new subjectivation in neoliberal work, as worker, as man, and in relation to that arch-symbol of the machine–human interface, the car.
Despite the shared history of socialist welfare state adaptation, there is consensus among schola... more Despite the shared history of socialist welfare state adaptation, there is consensus among scholars that Central and Eastern European (CEE) welfare states do not conform to either a putative post-socialist welfare state type or to Esping-Andersen's (1990) welfare regime typology developed for advanced capitalist welfare states (Deacon 2000; Fenger 2007; Aidukaite 2009; Inglot 2009). This is not surprising considering that welfare states in CEE are but a few years younger than their Western neighbours (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008; Inglot 2008; Mares and Carnes 2009) and that their historical evolution-despite their Bismarckian foundations, the homogenizing influence of the soviet model and the emergency, ad hoc and inconsistent institutional adjustments during the first two decades of post-socialism-has been as complex and diverse as that of their advanced capitalist counterparts (Inglot 2008, 2009; Cook 2010). This diversity is observable not only in terms of variations in the salience of institutional legacies from different historical periods across welfare domains, the timing, dynamics and direction of welfare reforms after the dissolution of state socialism and welfare state size, but also variations in the resulting architectures of mixed economies of welfare across policy domains and in the structure of inequalities and social outcomes. We agree, therefore, with Cerami's (2009, p. 51) assessment that welfare states in the European post-socialist and post-soviet space are best understood as 'unique hybrids', moreover, likely on diverging paths of development (see also Cook 2010; Deacon and Standing 1993; Orenstein and Haas 2002; Potucek 2008; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). As such, these welfare states may be grouped together at best only on the most general grounds and without sensitivity to differences in magnitude and kind. The shared Bismarckian and soviet-inspired institutional legacies are one broad similarity which might invite arguments of greater similarity than dissimilarity, although Inglot (2008) convincingly outlines the institutional variations that persisted despite these. The experience of welfare state adjustment during the 1990s, characterized by ad hoc, emergency institutional and policy transformations (Nunberg 1999; Deacon 2000, p. 149; Sotiropoulos and Pop 2007; Inglot 2009) and a highly volatile, cyclical expand-then-retrench, stop-and-go reform process during this period (Sotiropoulos et al. 2003; Inglot 2009; Szikra and Tomka 2009; Cook 2010) may also be cited as another shared feature of CEE welfare states, although again, scholars have highlighted variations certainly in degree (see Cerami and Vanhuysse 2009). Those emphasizing similarities over differences could also cite a propensity towards cushioning social policy adjustments in the early stages of post-socialist welfare state reform, although selective in scope, followed by path-departing institutional innovations during the late
On June 8, Moscow's Mayor announced the early cancellation of self-isolation. It had featured dig... more On June 8, Moscow's Mayor announced the early cancellation of self-isolation. It had featured digital passes and "Moscow walks" by strict schedule according to address. Transport cards for the risk group 65+ were unblocked. Traffic jams, urban noise, and children's voices returned. Taxi drivers no longer asked for QR codes from passengers. Hairdressers reopened , benches and playgrounds were freed from striped tape, a visible materialization of the lockdown city-scape. Fig.1. (Post)lockdown cityscape. Image by Galina Orlova
Workers form the exemplary class of economic, social, and psychological ‘losers’ of the postcommu... more Workers form the exemplary class of economic, social, and psychological ‘losers’ of the postcommunist transition.
This article draws on ethnographic work carried out since 2009 on workers and automotive unions i... more This article draws on ethnographic work carried out since 2009 on workers and automotive unions in Kaluga, Russia. The contrast between secure and temporary contract workers in foreign-owned car plants is a focus of activism among emerging alternative trade unions in Kaluga. Workers in both the 'new' production-scape of high-tech foreign-owned automotive assembly, and the 'old' low-tech Soviet production contexts articulate similar interpretive understandings of what constitutes 'precarious' work: lack of autonomy and the lack of a 'social wage' generally in labour. We interrogate this through in-depth interviews with unionised and non-unionised workers in the auto sector and other industries locally. A divide emerges between workers who go to work for the car plants, and those who remain in Soviet-types firms and who reject the labour relations model that it offers and which they understand to contrast with a traditional 'paternalistic' Russian model. 1. TNCs, labour and precariousness in Russia As transnational corporations (TNCs) like AstraZeneca, Toyota, Lotte, Samsung, Nestle, Volkswagen, Volvo, Continental, Peugeot and many others have appeared in the Kaluga region bordering Moscow, a new union movement has developed in the automotive industry, and in associated suppliers. Activists and workers have mobilised their labour power to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with management, despite the existence of unfavourable labour legislation. Firms' inexperience of industrial relations in Russia as well as the ongoing need for cheap labour often works to the advantage of younger workers who seek higher wages and job security in these globally-connected firms. New plants are often ripe for negotiation of power relations with management, unfettered by established 'Soviet-style' trade union cultures and practices. For the alternative trade unions this allows for mostly uncontested entry to plants. This is because, while superficially prominent nationally in the nominally corporatist structure of the economy, the real role of traditional unions is 'largely decorative and shallow' (Gimpelson & Kapeliushnikov, 2011, p. 17). In the car plant in which we carried out our research-owned by Volkswagen-the alternative trade union,
This article compares industrial relations in production sites in Slovakia and Russia owned by a ... more This article compares industrial relations in production sites in Slovakia and Russia owned by a single transnational automotive firm, Volkswagen. We analyse the empirical data using a working-class power approach. In Slovakia, associational and institutional power is well developed and influenced by the model of German work councils, but structural power is weakly exercised and unions rely on non-conflictual engagement with management. In Russia, structural working-class power remains strong, but the opportunities for transforming this into lasting associational, let alone institutional power, remain limited; thus, new unions make use of unconventional methods of protest to promote worker interests.
Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2016
This article explores the main debates and works that underpin the theoretical conceptualization ... more This article explores the main debates and works that underpin the theoretical conceptualization of this special issue and documents the exponential growth of literature on informality both globally and, especially, in post-socialist spaces. In spite of this growth, informality is still relatively understudied considering how widespread and significant a phenomenon it has become. In particular, if we go beyond a merely economistic view of the phenomenon, one could argue that an understanding of informality explains a variety of social responses and the number of cases where we have been able to apply an informality framework is perhaps very telling. Debates remain too bounded by one of two paradigms: either recourse to geographic particularism or exceptionalism or ongoing debates on transition or transformation (the appropriateness of 'posting' socialism). To break with this attitude, we suggest with this special issue that study of informality needs to build into itself a middle-field theory explaining its endurance which acknowledges both specificities of social action arising from common(ish) pasts and experience of change after 1989/91 leading to translatable presents, as well as these societies' positioning as mediating sites of neocapitalism between the Global North and South, with such a theory being a key articulation of the multiple modernities thesis. Since the early 2000s, the number of articles with "informality" in the title has grown from a few thousand each year to consistently more than 15,000 (according to Google Scholar). Interestingly, if we add in the search term "postsocialism, " we observe a smooth upward curve in the number of articles returning these words in their titles from the low tens in 2000 to approximately ten times that number in the last year (271 in 2015-2016-to be precise). Clearly, a parallel process is occurring. Social scientists are finding the term informality, with all its inbuilt imprecision, more interesting and useful over time, but so too are those scholars focusing on changes in post-communist, or post-socialist societies. But this growth over more than a decade should make us cautious about complaining too much at the imprecision of both terms. Clearly, such a correlation (which implies no causation)-implies at least some synergy in looking at on the one hand non-formal
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2017
How do the 'sharing economies' relate to the long history of informal economic practices as under... more How do the 'sharing economies' relate to the long history of informal economic practices as understood in the social sciences? This article examines conceptions of the sharing economy in terms of its relation to scholarship on informality. By using two case studies of informal economic practices that originated in socialist-era societies and continue to the present day in modified forms, we critique the notion that sharing economies are significantly novel in form or logic, other than technologically. We draw attention to the variety of informal economy practices to discuss how they may be socially embedded or disembedded. The main focus on global technological leveraging of productivity and connectivity in sharing economy practices would suggest that many aspects are akin to disembedded forms of informality. Scholarship needs to address the ongoing disciplinary parallelism on prefixed 'economies'-in doing so it would provide a better contextual and theoretical understanding of 'sharing economies'.
Based on long-term fieldwork in Russia, but focusing mainly on the aftermath of the 2014 Malaysia... more Based on long-term fieldwork in Russia, but focusing mainly on the aftermath of the 2014 Malaysian airliner downing in Ukraine, this article examines the individual ethnographer and informants alike as unwilling 'diplomatic' representatives in the field. Firstly, I discuss the authoritarian political context in Russia and how it affects the notion of 'soft power' and 'public' discourse. Then I relate the familiar 'political testing' experience of researchers by informants, and 'neutrality' in field relations (Ergun and Erdemir 2010). Next, I draw on the anthropology of indirect communication to characterize 'everyday diplomacy' after the event as a particular kind of civility. I go on to examine attendant affective states of 'tension, disturbance, or jarring' (Navaro-Yashin 2012) that both threaten civility and enable it. Finally, I argue that classic ethnographic rapport-building deserves further examination in the light of the porosity of politics, the social environment and the field.
This article contributes to a comparative analysis of the meaning of citizenship for youth. Young... more This article contributes to a comparative analysis of the meaning of citizenship for youth. Young people, traditionally seen as 'incomplete' citizens in the process of transition to adulthood, possess their own everyday understanding of what it means to be a citizen in the contemporary world. Based on empirical qualitative material collected in two Russian cities, it is argued that there is a disjunction among young Russians between the ideal-typical perception of citizenship and the practical realisation of it. Particular emphasis is put on the 'emotional' understanding of citizenship by Russian youth involving the experience of particular feelings towards fellow citizens and the country.
Unhomely Presents: Trauma and Values of Endurance Among Older People We are a rubbish dump for Mo... more Unhomely Presents: Trauma and Values of Endurance Among Older People We are a rubbish dump for Moscow now, in a literal as well as fi gurative sense, I mean. On the site of the clay mining pit they've started trucking in all kinds of muck [ drian' ]. We're worried about how it will aff ect the water supply. In Soviet times under Rodomirov there was one authority [ vlast' ] for everything-the housing, the plant, the roads, and this couldn't have happened. At the same time half the town works in Moscow on the construction sites. It's such a shame. Who wants to live in a railway carriage behind barbed wire for six months at a time and never see your family? No, I will stay at the metal fabricating workshop for my measly 16,000 a month. 1 Th is is my town, my home is here. What can you do? We have enough [ nam khvataet ]. Everything is orientated to protect the big city people, but it wasn't always like that.
A Woman's Kingdom? Affect, Care and Regendering Labour We sit in Galina Vilgel'movna's kitchen ea... more A Woman's Kingdom? Affect, Care and Regendering Labour We sit in Galina Vilgel'movna's kitchen eating her borsch before she goes off for the evening shift at the Polymer workshop. Her blue-collar wage of 20,000 roubles a month ($540), 1 along with some state pension benefi ts, now has to support her retired husband, grown-up daughter Elena and her one-year-old son, as well as her senile mother. Elena is tending to little Kolya, Galina's grandson, in the next room. Galina's husband Ivan Ivanych is boring everyone about his poor tomato crop this year. 2 Since the grandson arrived he has had little time to get on his moped and tend his allotment. Th at and the poor weather have stymied his plans. Elena used to work at the kindergarten, but since having the baby she has no intention of returning to work anytime soon. Th ere is no father; as Ivan Ivanych approaches the age of 60, he now has a new role-fi lling in as babysitter and carer. Elena brings in more than 1 Th e lower dollar value indicates the falling value of the rouble over time. 2 We met these two informants in Chap. 1. In the writing of this chapter I am highly indebted to Charlie Walker for the opportunity to discuss his work.
This book explores in rich, ethnographic detail life in a former 'monotown' in Kaluga oblast just... more This book explores in rich, ethnographic detail life in a former 'monotown' in Kaluga oblast just a few hours drive from Moscow. The author uses the rich empirical material to argue that more than twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, far from being a rapidly disappearing remnant of Soviet modernity, such 'monotowns' are sites of vibrant and complex social and economic relations, which are not solely embedded in Soviet, blue-collar, worker identities. Instead, the book explores the ways in which new forms of socio-economic relations have emerged in dialogue with the past, through which blue-collar 'workers' have come to revalorise and consequently 'make habitable' these so-called relics of the Soviet era. The book offers and alternative view of spaces, which although almost entirely absent from broader political narratives on the current and future direction of the Russian Federation and its role in the global economy, actually represent a very important part of life for millions of people in contemporary Russia.
This book is a comprehensive collection of key scholarship on informality from the whole post-soc... more This book is a comprehensive collection of key scholarship on informality from the whole post-socialist region. From Bosnia to Central Asia, passing through Russia and Azerbaijan, the contributions to this volume illustrate the multi-faceted and complex nature of informality, while demonstrating the growing scholarly and policy debates that have developed around the understanding of informality.
In contrast to approaches which tend to classify informality as ‘bad’ or ‘transitional’ – meaning that modernity will make it disappear – this edited volume concentrates on dynamics and mechanisms to understand and explain informality, while also debating its relationship with the market and society.
The authors seek to explain informality beyond a mere monetaristic/economistic approach, rediscovering its interconnection with social phenomena to propose a more holistic interpretation of the meaning of informality and its influence in various spheres of life.
They do this by exploring the evolving role of informal practices in the post-socialist region, and by focusing on informality as a social organisation determinant but also looking at the way it reshapes emergent social resistance against symbolic and real political order(s).
This book was originally published as two special issues, of Caucasus Survey and the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.
This book explores the function of the “everyday” in the formation, consolidation and performance... more This book explores the function of the “everyday” in the formation, consolidation and performance of national, sub-national and local identities in the former socialist region. Based on extensive original research including fieldwork, the book demonstrates how the study of everyday and mundane practices is a meaningful and useful way of understanding the socio-political processes of identity formation both at the top and bottom level of a state. The book covers a wide range of countries including the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and considers “everyday” banal practices, including those related to consumption, kinship, embodiment, mobility, music, and the use of objects and artifacts. Overall, the book draws on, and contributes to, theory; and shows how the process of nation-building is not just undertaken by formal actors, such as the state, its institutions and political elites.
This volume offers an in-depth investigation of the role of new media in the political, social an... more This volume offers an in-depth investigation of the role of new media in the political, social and cultural life in the region of Europe-Asia. By focusing on new media, which is understood primarily as internet-enabled networked social practice, the book puts forward a political and cultural redefinition of the region which is determined by the recognition of the diversity of new media uses in the countries included in the study. This book focuses on the period prior to the advent of ‘world internet revolutions’, and it registers the region at its pivotal moment—at the time of its entry into the post-broadcast era. Does the Internet aid democratisation or it conditioned by socio-political norms? Has the Internet changed politics or has it had to fit existing political structures? Has the use of digital technologies revolutionized election campaigns? How is hyperlinked society different from society prior to the advent of the web? How do ordinary people actually use the Internet. These and other pressing questions – crucial to understanding the post-socialist world – are investigated in the current volume.
Working-class masculinity and the post-socialist neoliberal order Working-class men have found th... more Working-class masculinity and the post-socialist neoliberal order Working-class men have found themselves in an unparalleled position of subalterneity in such societies (Kideckel 2002). They are faced with an 'illusory corporatism' (Ost 2000): state, and employer relations are exclusory and seek to impose a strong form of neoliberal labour disciplining and dispossession. Elites and the emergent middle classes alike see workers as little more than politically quiescent, mechanical-turk operators of moribund Soviet plant in dying factories of industrial hinterlands far from Moscow. …they should be grateful to be given the privilege to unthinking remake the self into a pliant, self-sacrificing, and interchangeable cog in the newly emergent transnational operations of manufacturers of global capital. Introduction Car ownership and the DIY skills in repairing mechanically simple old Russian cars speak to issues around the display of working-class masculinities In addition, the paper explores automobility as emblematic of uneasy social mobility and fraught engagement with new neoliberal regimes of work on the self and flexibility. Choices about what kind of car to own, whether to use credit, to buy Russia-built or 'foreign', whether to learn from others how to maintain it or pay a stranger – all these forks in the path of becoming automobile are statements of what kind of man a person wants to be. They are similarly subject to interpretation by others in a working-class setting. Conversations and conflicts about cars come to dramatize aspects of literal and social class mobility, immobility. Cars as markers of masculinity intersect with both aspirational fantasies (that largely remain inaccessible) and stubborn retrenchments of more traditional identities. These 'debates' bespeak an uneasy relationship with the 'desired' car as status symbol and object of labour in the 'Western' factories which employ the subjects of this research.
Why does the 'informal economy' persist in post-socialist states which are in the main supposed t... more Why does the 'informal economy' persist in post-socialist states which are in the main supposed to be set on a path of modernisation towards some kind of market economy, democratic transparency and the rule of law? The disparity between the stubborn persistence of informality in many post-communist societies and its much lower incidence in Western Europe appears even starker if we use the term in its widest sense to include 'off-the-books' salaries, bribes, cash-in-hand wages, avoidance or evasion of taxes, self-provisioning, barter, and in-kind exchange. How does this broad definition help us understand the kind of societies and political economies that these states have become (and might be stubbornly entrenched as - regardless of changes in political leaders)? Focussing on Russia, but also discussing CEE and FSU countries, and drawing on his ethnographic fieldwork on blue-collar workers, this paper offers a broad discussion of the significance of informality in grasping 'where we are now' after 25 years of post-communist transformation.
Focus: alternative trade unions in the transnational automotive industry in Russia.
traditional ... more Focus: alternative trade unions in the transnational automotive industry in Russia. traditional unions associated with state control; new alternative unions in Russia are particularly associated with political opposition and radicalism. Analysis of recent (2008-present) activities to mobilise automotive workers in multinational and domestic owned plants. Due to draconian labour laws, often activists resort to work-to-rule and indirect methods of resistance/protest. At the same time their activities resemble both political entryism and left agitation in the face of a hostile and authoritarian state. Is this a barometer of wider working-class power and opposition in post-socialism? What are the prospects for their semi-formal, semi-informal insurgency against neocapitalism?
5. Innovative or novel research. This is a more traditionally academic session. If you are curren... more 5. Innovative or novel research. This is a more traditionally academic session. If you are currently working on a specific research project and you would like to share it (because you think it's innovative and can benefit participants, or because you want feedback for yourself or you are looking for new collaborations within your research) this session is an opportunity to do so.
5. Innovative or novel research. This is a more traditionally academic session. If you are curren... more 5. Innovative or novel research. This is a more traditionally academic session. If you are currently working on a specific research project and you would like to share it (because you think it's innovative and can benefit participants, or because you want feedback for yourself or you are looking for new collaborations within your research) this session is an opportunity to do so.
Английский антрополог Джереми Моррис на семинаре научно-учебной лаборатории исследований в област... more Английский антрополог Джереми Моррис на семинаре научно-учебной лаборатории исследований в области бизнес-коммуникаций НИУ ВШЭ обобщил результаты многолетних наблюдений за жизнью обитателей бывших промышленных моногородов, выяснив, как существуют и чем живут «синие воротнички» -рабочий класс современной России На бывшие моногорода приходится примерно 25% городского пространства России. Они обеспечивают от 20% до 30% ВВП, рассказал директор Центра исследований России и восточной Европы (CREES), старший научный сотрудник(Associate Professor) Бирмингемского университета (Великобритания) Джереми Моррис на семинаре «"Синие воротнички" в России между "сомнительной" трудовой деятельностью и неформальной занятостью. Заметки о "бросовом приданом" постсоветской индустриальной современности», состоявшемся в НИУ ВШЭ. В докладе были представлены промежуточные результаты антропологического исследований опыта развития моногорода, максимального пригодного для жизни людей.
This seminar launches the edited book The Informal Post-Socialist Economy and will discuss cases ... more This seminar launches the edited book The Informal Post-Socialist Economy and will discuss cases of enduring informal economic practices from around the post-socialist space as well as presenting recent research on the nature of illegal payments made by patients and students in healthcare and higher education in Russia and Ukraine.
One author dropped from the collection below. We can manage but we also thought that it might be ... more One author dropped from the collection below. We can manage but we also thought that it might be worth to check if someone is interested, since in summer many have more time to write. Time is short but, on the bright side, the volume will come out quickly (early 2017)
If interested contact me at
ap (at) tlu.ee or just reply to this message
by the 20 of August at latest (better earlier). We would need the paper as soon as possible but we might be able to negotiate a bit
The national in everyday life. Identity and nation-building in post-socialist spaces
Editors: Abel Polese, Jeremy Morris, Emilia Pawlusz and Oleksandra Seliverstova
Overview and rationale
With this work we intend to explore, from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, how everyday practices become a meaningful and useful site for understanding socio-political engagements in the nation-building processes. The meaning of ‘everyday’ encompasses any kind of quotidian and ‘banal’ practices. These could be related to consumption, kinship, embodiment, mobility, games, clothing, Although there is a growing body of literature on informality and everyday practices in the post-socialist context, most of them do not sufficiently connect the micro and the macro or, in other words, do not necessarily explore the way micro processes at the local and/or everyday level may come to affect macro transformations and policy making at the national or regional level.
By complementing current works on identity construction from a bottom-up perspective, the current volume will focus on how, through everyday practices, individuals establish, negotiate and embed references to concepts of citizenship, statehood and national self-definition. Developing earlier insights into the study of everyday nationalism, initiated by Michael Billig (1995) and critically updated by Skey (2009) to encompass the need to take account of globalization, the editors are seek empirically-based studies of nationhood that emerge not from the state level, but in practices of everyday life among ordinary people and serve to 'materialize' the nation.
Questions perspective authors might want to engage with include (but are not limited to):
· How national identity could be explored through everyday acts, like consumption, leisure, food procurement and cooking, education of children, handcraft and arts, fashion, tourism, organisation of household.
· What are the dispositions and habituses that reveal shared or conflicting understandings of national identity.
· Perception and understanding of national belonging by ordinary people.
· How national characteristics are revealed in organization of public/private space, and movement through that space.
· Informal or spontaneous nation-building.
· The contrast between ‘hot’ and banal forms of everyday nationalism.
· The long durée effect of post-socialist transformation on nationalism.
This 5 ECTS Credit course aims to investigate the co-called ‘conservative turn’ in Russian cultur... more This 5 ECTS Credit course aims to investigate the co-called ‘conservative turn’ in Russian cultural politics since around 2010. Scholars Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk (we read them in Week 2) argue that the current regime has taken an increasingly conservative turn since the protests in Russia in 2011 and 2012 for two reasons. First to solidify and legitimize a political system with one dominating leader supported by the elites, arguing that this form of ‘sovereign’ or ‘managed’ democracy is part of Russian identity, secondly to paint a picture of the western world as degenerate, rejecting its Judeo-Christian heritage, in contrast to Russia which becomes a defender of European civilisation.
The guiding questions that will be reflected in the assignment are as follows: What is the conservative turn in Russia? What has caused it? How has it affected political discourse around the family, gender roles, the upbringing of children? What kind of groups are identified as threats to this normative order? How does the government use this discourse to justify its foreign policy? How are race and religion relevant to conservatism and national identity? How ‘liberal’, is the liberal opposition to the government? How has the conservative turn been expressed in relations with neighbours of Russia?
Framing the conservative ‘turn’ in Russia as a ‘culture war’ casts ordinary Russians as an amorph... more Framing the conservative ‘turn’ in Russia as a ‘culture war’ casts ordinary Russians as an amorphous reactionary mass, willingly following political entrepreneurs’ cues of intolerance. This article rejects that interpretation, to restore agency to ordinary Russians. Based on ethnographic encounters discussing homophobia and normative gender and family attitudes, the article argues that vernacular social conservatism re-appropriates official discourses in ways that say more about Russians’ relationship to their own state (rather than attitudes to ‘the West’). Objections to ‘permissiveness’ are structured by a search for putatively lost socialisation – symbolised by the concept of moral ‘vospitanie’: upbringing.
How do the 'sharing economies' relate to the long history of informal economic practices as under... more How do the 'sharing economies' relate to the long history of informal economic practices as understood in the social sciences? This article examines conceptions of the sharing economy in terms of its relation to scholarship on informality. By using two case studies of informal economic practices that originated in socialist-era societies and continue to the present day in modified forms we critique the notion that sharing economies are significantly novel in form or logic, other than technologically. We draw attention to the variety of informal economy practices to discuss how they may be socially embedded or disembedded. The main focus on global technological leveraging of productivity and connectivity in sharing economy practices would suggest that many aspects are akin to disembedded forms of informality. Scholarship needs to address the ongoing disciplinary parallelism on prefixed 'economies' – in doing so it would provide a better contextual and theoretical understanding of 'sharing economies'.
Cheesed off, but not because of sanctions. Russians adapt to increasing immiseration as global ca... more Cheesed off, but not because of sanctions. Russians adapt to increasing immiseration as global capital increases its grip. With the constant, confusing and often misinformed media noise around Russia, you would be forgiven for believing a number of unhelpfully distorting half-truths: That Russia has been a pariah state for a while (connected to sanctions after the occupation of Crimea and intervention in East Ukraine). That Russia is on a kind of lock-down with no outlet for protests and careful management of dissent by the state, or that Putin is so popular that protests are pointless or restricted to a small educated minority. Lastly, you might get the impression that oil money continues to keep the Russians reasonably quiescent – after all, the government spent heavily on social programmes before and after the initial shocks associated with the global financial crisis. The aim of this piece is not to go into the all too frequent errors, overestimations of Russian efforts 'against' the West, the misunderstandings that conflate domestic-orientated actions with those directed outward. Overall, the obsession with a kind of 'Cold War 2.0' makes debate all about 'us' in the West and obscures or impedes analysis of the increasing similarity of social, economic and political crises in states like Russia and the 'West'. In this blog post I will present a kind of thought experiment about what could be called provocatively 'neoliberal globalizing convergence' by focussing on the forms of elite enrichment and detachment from ordinary people; the impoverishment and precarisation of the majority of citizens; and thirdly, 'cheese' (specifically the lack of access to affordable cheese).
INFORMAL AND EVERYDAY NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM: BOOK PRESENTATION (books available on my profi... more INFORMAL AND EVERYDAY NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM: BOOK PRESENTATION (books available on my profile, post available on FB)
Does your book take into account the role of middle range actors, such as intellectuals, in nation building processes? Intriguing question by Peter Rutland during the conference “Nationalism and the Market” at Universita La Sapienza, CERU
Time to reflect and give a more complex answer was short so I am uploading it here
Studies on nation building have extensively examined statist perspectives on nation building, which is what we initially tried to move away from with Isaacs and our “New tools and approaches” and that include the work of some middle actors.
However, intellectuals, civil society and other actors can still sign petitions, suggest interpretations and narratives on national identities that eventually make it to the headlines or national narratives.
With the current books we put at the centre of our inquiry events that will not make any noise and remain, in other words, invisible. Think of when a product becomes popular - Gangnam style in Korea or Turkish Cola some years ago, or unpopular - such as boycott of Russian products in Ukraine after the 2014 events. Even if they can be considered expression of national sentiments, their impact on a society will not be easy to grasp.
Companies will have figures and can estimate how much they have gained, or lost but they are not passive actors. Based on these figures they will have to decide on whether to stop, or keep on, selling a product. They might want to rebrand it or replace with some other product that suits the market better at some point.
But these choices can also embed a symbolic choice. Ethnic rebranding (see Zsombor Csaba’s paper) can contribute to reinforce a sense of national pride and thus, eventually, have a macro effect on identity construction. The message, in such case, would not use state official channels or middle actors but commercial ones. However, a simple marketing strategy might end up affecting the perception of national identity and various ethnic groups in a country might choose to consume, or not, a given product based on whether they support a given idea or not, on whether they try to integrate, or reject a national idea by ideologically consuming (or not) the nation (see Fox 2007).
We believe that it is worth paying attention at these phenomena, at the agency of common citizens and the way it creates synergies with market forces broadly defined (consumption, the culture industry, tourism) to be able to better understand some nuances in the construction of national identity in an era when these forces have become, symbolically or economically, as powerful as a state, at least in some cases.
Uploads
Papers by Jeremy Morris
In contrast to approaches which tend to classify informality as ‘bad’ or ‘transitional’ – meaning that modernity will make it disappear – this edited volume concentrates on dynamics and mechanisms to understand and explain informality, while also debating its relationship with the market and society.
The authors seek to explain informality beyond a mere monetaristic/economistic approach, rediscovering its interconnection with social phenomena to propose a more holistic interpretation of the meaning of informality and its influence in various spheres of life.
They do this by exploring the evolving role of informal practices in the post-socialist region, and by focusing on informality as a social organisation determinant but also looking at the way it reshapes emergent social resistance against symbolic and real political order(s).
This book was originally published as two special issues, of Caucasus Survey and the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.
traditional unions associated with state control; new alternative unions in Russia are particularly associated with political opposition and radicalism.
Analysis of recent (2008-present) activities to mobilise automotive workers in multinational and domestic owned plants.
Due to draconian labour laws, often activists resort to work-to-rule and indirect methods of resistance/protest.
At the same time their activities resemble both political entryism and left agitation in the face of a hostile and authoritarian state.
Is this a barometer of wider working-class power and opposition in post-socialism? What are the prospects for their semi-formal, semi-informal insurgency against neocapitalism?
If interested contact me at
ap (at) tlu.ee or just reply to this message
by the 20 of August at latest (better earlier). We would need the paper as soon as possible but we might be able to negotiate a bit
The national in everyday life. Identity and nation-building in post-socialist spaces
Editors: Abel Polese, Jeremy Morris, Emilia Pawlusz and Oleksandra Seliverstova
Overview and rationale
With this work we intend to explore, from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, how everyday practices become a meaningful and useful site for understanding socio-political engagements in the nation-building processes. The meaning of ‘everyday’ encompasses any kind of quotidian and ‘banal’ practices. These could be related to consumption, kinship, embodiment, mobility, games, clothing, Although there is a growing body of literature on informality and everyday practices in the post-socialist context, most of them do not sufficiently connect the micro and the macro or, in other words, do not necessarily explore the way micro processes at the local and/or everyday level may come to affect macro transformations and policy making at the national or regional level.
By complementing current works on identity construction from a bottom-up perspective, the current volume will focus on how, through everyday practices, individuals establish, negotiate and embed references to concepts of citizenship, statehood and national self-definition. Developing earlier insights into the study of everyday nationalism, initiated by Michael Billig (1995) and critically updated by Skey (2009) to encompass the need to take account of globalization, the editors are seek empirically-based studies of nationhood that emerge not from the state level, but in practices of everyday life among ordinary people and serve to 'materialize' the nation.
Questions perspective authors might want to engage with include (but are not limited to):
· How national identity could be explored through everyday acts, like consumption, leisure, food procurement and cooking, education of children, handcraft and arts, fashion, tourism, organisation of household.
· What are the dispositions and habituses that reveal shared or conflicting understandings of national identity.
· Perception and understanding of national belonging by ordinary people.
· How national characteristics are revealed in organization of public/private space, and movement through that space.
· Informal or spontaneous nation-building.
· The contrast between ‘hot’ and banal forms of everyday nationalism.
· The long durée effect of post-socialist transformation on nationalism.
The guiding questions that will be reflected in the assignment are as follows: What is the conservative turn in Russia? What has caused it? How has it affected political discourse around the family, gender roles, the upbringing of children? What kind of groups are identified as threats to this normative order? How does the government use this discourse to justify its foreign policy? How are race and religion relevant to conservatism and national identity? How ‘liberal’, is the liberal opposition to the government? How has the conservative turn been expressed in relations with neighbours of Russia?
Does your book take into account the role of middle range actors, such as intellectuals, in nation building processes? Intriguing question by Peter Rutland during the conference “Nationalism and the Market” at Universita La Sapienza, CERU
Time to reflect and give a more complex answer was short so I am uploading it here
Studies on nation building have extensively examined statist perspectives on nation building, which is what we initially tried to move away from with Isaacs and our “New tools and approaches” and that include the work of some middle actors.
However, intellectuals, civil society and other actors can still sign petitions, suggest interpretations and narratives on national identities that eventually make it to the headlines or national narratives.
With the current books we put at the centre of our inquiry events that will not make any noise and remain, in other words, invisible. Think of when a product becomes popular - Gangnam style in Korea or Turkish Cola some years ago, or unpopular - such as boycott of Russian products in Ukraine after the 2014 events. Even if they can be considered expression of national sentiments, their impact on a society will not be easy to grasp.
Companies will have figures and can estimate how much they have gained, or lost but they are not passive actors. Based on these figures they will have to decide on whether to stop, or keep on, selling a product. They might want to rebrand it or replace with some other product that suits the market better at some point.
But these choices can also embed a symbolic choice. Ethnic rebranding (see Zsombor Csaba’s paper) can contribute to reinforce a sense of national pride and thus, eventually, have a macro effect on identity construction. The message, in such case, would not use state official channels or middle actors but commercial ones. However, a simple marketing strategy might end up affecting the perception of national identity and various ethnic groups in a country might choose to consume, or not, a given product based on whether they support a given idea or not, on whether they try to integrate, or reject a national idea by ideologically consuming (or not) the nation (see Fox 2007).
We believe that it is worth paying attention at these phenomena, at the agency of common citizens and the way it creates synergies with market forces broadly defined (consumption, the culture industry, tourism) to be able to better understand some nuances in the construction of national identity in an era when these forces have become, symbolically or economically, as powerful as a state, at least in some cases.