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Disrupted Landscapes
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 252

Disrupted Landscapes

The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation’s forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.

When Things Become Property
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 250

When Things Become Property

Governments have conferred ownership titles to many citizens throughout the world in an effort to turn things into property. Almost all elements of nature have become the target of property laws, from the classic preoccupation with land to more ephemeral material, such as air and genetic resources. When Things Become Property interrogates the mixed outcomes of conferring ownership by examining postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, and finds that property reforms are no longer, if they ever were, miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.

A New Ecological Order
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 464

A New Ecological Order

The rise of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century forged a new ecological order in North American and Western European states, radically transforming the environment through science and technology in the name of human progress. Far less known are the dramatic environmental changes experienced by Eastern Europe, in many ways a terra incognita for environmental historians and anthropologists. A New Ecological Order explores, from a historical and ethnographic perspective, the role of state planners, bureaucrats, and experts—engineers, agricultural engineers, geographers, biologists, foresters, and architects—as agents of change in the natural world of Eastern Europe from 1870 to ...

Emotions, Senses and Affects in the Context of Southeast Europe
  • Language: en

Emotions, Senses and Affects in the Context of Southeast Europe

This volume focuses on emotions of people in Southeast Europe. Grief and sadness take on different forms of expression. In the era of socialist rule laughter could express political resistance; for labour migrants visiting their country of origin evokes feelings of being at home. Cities attract visitors by appealing to emotions and people try to relive times of national glory by historical re-enactments. Gossip is a means of expressing emotions, smells and rituals become expressions of remembered emotions. Emotions are a factor researchers must always take seriously, both of the people studied and their own.

Balkan Life Courses
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 349

Balkan Life Courses

The historical upheavals in Southeast Europe since the early 20th century brought about deep transformations of people’s life courses. The concept of 'life course' enables the understanding of human lives within their socio-cultural and political contexts, stressing people’s everyday experiences and agency. The papers in this volume discuss problems such as the impact of migration and mobility on families, such as economic migration transforming traditional structures into individualistic strategies. Other papers give examples of ruptures of life worlds caused by the impact of dramatic historical events. Demonstrating the agency of actors instead of presenting them as passive victims, some authors present approaches that are innovative for the region. Apart from various forms of migration and their impact on life courses, the volume also includes contributions on the role of religion and social memory in the family.

Balkan Life Courses. Part 1
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 314

Balkan Life Courses. Part 1

The historical upheavals in Southeast Europe since the early 20th century brought about deep transformations of people's everyday lives and their life courses. The concept of ‘life course’ enables the understanding of human lives within their socio-cultural and political contexts, stressing agency and people’s everyday experience. Balkan contexts invite for analyses that bridge political and social changes and their influence on individual life courses. The papers discuss problems such as family life and parenthood, ages and ageing, life-cycle rituals and the artistic expressions devoted to them. The authors present manifestations of the social differentiation and cultural multiplicity under post-socialist or post-colonial conditions – from developing contemporary global life styles among the emerging urban middle class to the ghettoization of some social or age groups. This volume focusses on developing family cultures, on experiencing socialization and age, on ‘old’ and ‘new’ life cycle rituals and their artistic representations in contemporary Southeast Europe.

Transforming Peasants, Property and Power
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 556

Transforming Peasants, Property and Power

The result of a project initiated and coordinated by Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery, research for this volume was conducted by a group of twenty anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and literary critics from Romania, United States, and Great Britain. Employing interdisciplinary methods and using a wealth of previously unexplored archival and oral sources, the authors managed to produce the most solid monograph to date on the process of collectivization in Romania. Book jacket.

Cultures of Crisis in Southeast Europe
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 368

Cultures of Crisis in Southeast Europe

The history of the Balkan Peninsula of the last two centuries is marked by deep transformations and upheavals. The emergence and disappearance of states, ethnic conflicts and wars, changes of political systems, economic crises, migration movements, and natural disasters are the more visible of such upheavals. Most of them have been experienced as deep crises that forced people to adapt to often radically new situations. All too often crisis management became a permanent way of life. The included essays focus on the cultures of crisis and on the reactions of societies and individuals to them: on their impact on everyday life, on peoples' strategies of coping, on the processes of adaptation, and on peoples' attitudes. (Series: Ethnologia Balkanica, Vol. 19) [Subject: Sociology, Balkan Studies, Politics, Migration, Crisis Management]

The Nature State
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 245

The Nature State

This volume brings together case studies from around the globe (including China, Latin America, the Philippines, Namibia, India and Europe) to explore the history of nature conservation in the twentieth century. It seeks to highlight the state, a central actor in these efforts, which is often taken for granted, and establishes a novel concept – the nature state – as a means for exploring the historical formation of that portion of the state dedicated to managing and protecting nature. Following the Industrial Revolution and post-war exponential increase in human population and consumption, conservation in myriad forms has been one particularly visible way in which the government and its ...

Land and the Mortgage
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 323

Land and the Mortgage

The mortgaging of land is not just economic and legal but also social and cultural. Here, anthropologists, historians, and economists explore origins, variations, and meanings of the land mortgage, and the risks to homes and livelihoods. Combining findings from archives, printed records, and live ethnography, the book describes the changing and problematic assumptions surrounding mortgage. It shows how mortgages affect people on the ground, where local forms of mutuality mix with larger bureaucracies. The outcomes of mortgage in Africa, Europe, Asia, and America challenge economic development orthodoxies, calling for a human-centered exploration of this age-old institution.