SSC 333 Anthropology of European Transition

Content

This course is about post-socialism and cultural politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Most Europeans (social and political scientists included) lack knowledge about socio-cultural and political-economic changes that have been taking place since the fall of communism in 1989. Quite understandably, such transitions are fascinating not only because they considerably differ from cultural and political-economic changes in many Western countries, but also because comparable transitions have started to accelerate in other post-socialist countries, in Vietnam, Cuba, and not in the last place China.

To understand these transitions we will first analyze the political economy of communism, and compare it with market-oriented (capitalist) economies. Communism can be defined as a parallel modernity, whose fall caused severe problems to many people because of changing labor relations and social security. During this course, we will study how different people in different countries and of different regions have been experiencing changes of the last nineteen years.

Topics which are considered by many in the West as ‘natural’ and fundamental, such as trust, property, urbanization, social strata and even history and memory, turn out to be highly disputable. During the course we will therefore study trust and distrust, privatization and property, material culture, everyday economies, urban geography, the new rich as a new social stratum, hidden histories and myth making.

In the second part of the course, students work in small groups on a research project. First, we will study Daniel Kalder’s Lost Cosmonaut. Travels To The Republics That Tourism Forgot (2006). Kalder calls himself an anti-tourist and his observations resemble discourse of a contemporary amateur-ethnographer. Yet much of his work is fascinating and can be used as starting points for further anthropological research. The topics which Kalder describes are certainly not only relevant for the former soviet republics he visited. Of wider importance are for example: marriage agencies (sexual encounters), religious revitalizations and indigenous and/or ethnic movements, material culture, popular culture, megalomaniac politicians, or ecological disasters.

The course is highly recommendable to those who want to do an M.A. in anthropology, sociology, political sciences, international studies, political philosophy, and to students with a general interest in transformations beyond their own, familiar hemispheres.

Instructor

Dr. Herman Tak

Period

Spring / 2011

Course Material

• C.M. Hahn (ed.) 2002. Postsocialism, Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia. London: Routledge ISBN. 0-415-26257-7  (paperback);
• Caroline Humphrey 2002. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies After Socialism. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press ISBN. 0-8014-8773-0 (paperback);
• Daniel Kalder, 2006. Lost Cosmonaut. Travels To the Republics That Tourism Forgot.  London: Farber and Farber ISBN. 1-571-22780-5 (paperback);
• Reader: PDF – Workspaces.

Prerequisites

One needs to have followed one of the following courses in order to take this course:

• SSC 111 Introduction to Sociology
• SSC 131 Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology
• SSC 151 Introduction to Political Theory

Additional Prerequisites

Or any second or third-year course in Anthropology, Sociology, Human Geography, Political Sciences, or by permission of the instructor.

Required for

This course is required in order to take the following course:

• SSC 334 Advanced Cultural Studies