Postsocialist Perspective Research Articles

Tirana: Its History and a Post-Socialist Perspective on Urban Growth and Transformation between 1991–2016

Tirana: Its History and a Post-Socialist Perspective on Urban Growth and Transformation between 1991–2016

Understanding broader LGB+ identity from a post-socialist perspective: Assessment of validity of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identity Scale (LGBIS) on a Czech sample

Understanding broader LGB+ identity from a post-socialist perspective: Assessment of validity of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identity Scale (LGBIS) on a Czech sample

Utopia of the New Town – Implemented or Degraded? Novi Beograd, Nowa Huta and Tirana e Re in a Socialist and Post-Socialist Perspective

The paper follows in the assumption that the transformations of central-European and Balkan cities taking place in the second half of the 20th century can be considered a symptom of complex economic, social and political processes related to the development and decline of the culture of socialism. Changes after the Second World War were closely interconnected with the urbanization project, which was implemented in two ways – either by rebuilding, reorganizing and resemantizing old cities, or by creating cities and urban communities – in a modernist spirit – from scratch. We consider these issues by comparing three examples of cities with different historical experience, which shaped their identities within culturally and politically different frames of reference. The subject of thus oriented considerations is the question of what happened to the socialist utopia which at the end of the 20th century was put to the test. What was its fate depending on various politically – but also culturally-motivated scenarios of political transformation? In what way and by whom is its heritage appropriated in the 1990’s? While analyzing the fate of the utopia of the new city from a post-communist perspective, it should be noted that although individual projects did not meet the ideals and hopes of their designers, they proved to be an impulse that released social activityqualitatively different from existing traditional patterns and initiated a thorough redefinition of urban identities.

Boarding schools in transition: A post-socialist analysis of “relevance” as an education policy problem in Mongolia

The rural boarding schools that were established in the socialist era to serve children in Mongolia’s herding communities remain integral to national policy for ensuring universal access to formal education. Education policy actors demonstrate commitment to the socialist legacy of the schooled herder child, while at the same posing legitimate questions as to boarding schools’ quality and contemporary relevance. This questioning is framed with reference to a globally-orientated discourse of standards, outcomes measurement and skills for employability. The paper argues from a post-socialist perspective that this orientation forecloses a nuanced, contextualised understanding of “relevance” as a complex educational policy problem. Drawing on policy documents and secondary literature, it develops and applies a post-socialist conceptual framework to explore the temporal and spatial orientations of rural boarding schools and their “relevance”. The analysis evidences multiple, intersecting layers of change which situate the schooled herder child and constitute Mongolia”s “unfinished business of socialism” in education. The paper concludes that the layering revealed in this analysis needs to be more visible to educational policy; and that to resist oversimplifying the complex problem of education”s relevance is an ontological imperative.

Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice ed. by Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert

Reviewed by: Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice ed. by Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert P. Watson Koobak, Redi; Tlostanova, Madina and Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi (eds). Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice. Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2021. xvi + 265 pp. Illustrations. Figures. References. Index. £120:00; £36:99; £33:99 (e-book). By bringing together the postcolonial and the postsocialist, until now addressed separately in feminist studies, this anthology aims to open the way to new sets of political questions with the potential for impacting global change. [End Page 591] Postcolonialism is rarely addressed through postsocialist perspectives, which have typically been concentrated on East European and post-Soviet countries. Moreover, as the book observes, after the Cold War feminists in Eastern Europe tend to engage with postcolonial discourse to the extent of describing their location as the internal other of Europe, while feminists from the global south are reluctant to engage in a critical discussion of postsocialism. Instead of abandoning past and present versions of socialism, the book contends, postsocialism should be productively rethought. The book is composed of eighteen chapters ranging from interviews and conversations to straight single author texts. The chapters traverse themes such as disability, gender, sexuality, migration, the EU and racism/whiteness. The diverse group of twenty-eight contributors includes activists, artists and scholars from a range of scholarly backgrounds. Chapters are organized under three headings: intersections/opacities/challenges, which represent broad axes for thinking between the postcolonial and the postsocialist. The first section considers intersections in terms of the interactions of cultures, epistemologies, ideologies and human conditions within modernity/coloniality. The second interrogates normative understandings of opacity with the aim of extracting the idea’s potential for resistance, while the third part grapples with the challenges posed by the complicity of feminisms in upholding a racist European imperial project. In her chapter on postsocialist precarity, Jennifer Suchland explores the ways in which East European and Eurasian postsocialism relate to the history of colonialism. Looking at postsocialism as a global condition, postsocialist precarity involves the defunding of public services, the promotion of austerity and of profit over wellbeing, as well as the criminalization of protest. Suchland encompasses postsocialist and decolonial critiques of power with the aim of exposing the hidden Eurocentrism in critical postsocialist theorizing. She offers a decolonial reading of precarity by analysing two images — Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga and an image of a sex-trafficked person — uncovering how hidden eurocentrism can be carried forward in the discourses around them. Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora’s intention is to bring back socialism as a way of framing analysis. They raise unasked questions such as: how is Eastern Europe racialized in complex ways through the commodification of bodies? How does such racialization complicate notions of US racial formations? What might be the implications for postcolonial theory? In her interview with Manuelā Boatca, Madina Tlostanova notes the way in which a new postsocialist feminist subject is abandoning past and present socialist phenomena, and the scale of the challenge of engaging feminists from the global south regarding this issue. Boatca identifies this as coloniality of knowledge, which produces categories such as Second versus Third World which come to constitute a field [End Page 592] within which competing political interests are played out. Deconstructing colonial categories is prerequisite for making transverse connections. In other chapters, Lidia Zhigunova discusses the racial status of Circassians who have become the epitome of ‘whiteness’ in US racial discourse yet who are branded as ‘Blacks’ in Russia together with other ‘Caucasians’. Tjaša Kancler pushes for a radical approach to analysis that interrogates or leaves behind Western-derived meanings of gender. Maria Mayerchyk and Olga Plakhotnik, writing on post-Maidan Ukraine, argue that ‘uneventful activism’ can help forge futures that can avoid the trap of nationalism, capitalism and colonialism, even at a time of war. Angéla Kóczé in conversation with Petra Bakos reflects on developing a critical race feminist agenda sensitive to the specific characteristics and needs of Eastern European Roma communities. Alyosxa...

ТРАНЗИТНІСТЬ І ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЇ МІСЬКОГО ПРОСТОРУ У ПОСТРАДЯНСЬКІЙ ПЕРСПЕКТИВІ: ПІДХОДИ ТА КОНЦЕПТУАЛІЗАЦІЯ

This paper explores current debates on post-socialist transition and transformations, focusing on their spatial dimension and conceptualization of the urban transformations. We analyze the evolution of approaches and current discussions around transition as such and post-socialist transition in particular, the relationships between transition and transformations along with their spatial outcomes, and define the main types of restructuring in the course of spatial transformations. In this paper, we illustrate transition as temporal and methodological frame and provide an overview of ideas on its ending, relevance and usefulness, interpreting post-socialist transition as fundamental societal changes of political regime, economy, institutions and space, which are taking place simultaneously. We argue that urban transformations as spatial projection and outcome of the post-socialist transition could be interpreted through the lens of restructuring – the process of socialist structures updating under which old structures are transforming, supplementing with new elements, and therefore new structures are gradually developing as a reflection of the new ideologies and spatial practices. We distinguish and analyze three main types of urban space restructuring in the post-socialist perspective - functional, morphological and institutional, which, interacting, illustrate the key changes of the post-socialist urban spaces. Such interpretation of spatial transformations could be useful for understanding different dimensions of spatial dynamics, providing deeper contextualization and giving comparative perspective on spatial outcomes.

Demolition-Based Urban Regeneration from a Post-Socialist Perspective: Case Study of a Neighborhood in Novi Sad, Serbia

Although a growing body of literature examines the post-socialist European context of urban regeneration, studies on the demolition-based approaches are relatively scarce. Moreover, the regeneration policies of cities in non-EU Balkan countries with a distinctive transitional path remain largely unexplored. The paper contributes to filling these voids by investigating a specific demolition-based urban regeneration strategy named permanent reconstruction, which has been launched in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city, and applied to low-density neighborhoods with a derelict housing stock, being seen as a tool for achieving sustainable urban development. The specific research aims are to explain the origin of this strategy; analyze the institutional and planning framework, mechanisms, and dynamics of the regeneration process through a case study; and assess its outcomes based on a mixed methodology. The main research objective is to identify the issues of a post-socialist entrepreneurial urban governance, primarily deriving from Serbia’s distorted transition, which hampered the development of a strategic, integrated, and locale-conscious approach. The findings suggest that Novi Sad and other Serbian cities necessitate socially responsible and context-perceptive regeneration that would produce sustainable regeneration projects. The authors propose the means for redefining them, emphasizing the responsibilities of the public sector and the significance of involving the local community in the planning and decision-making process.

“Aggressive Refugees, Violent Hooligans, Concerned Citizens”: Reinterpreting Multiple Processes of Difference-Making in Mediatizations of Migration and Conflict in East Germany in the German Media1

While feminist postcolonial literature provides valuable insight into the intersectional effects of race, gender and sexuality, other dimensions of difference-making like region or class often remain invisible. Combining postcolonial and post-socialist perspectives, this paper explores the intersections of multidimensional frontiers in the social production of “otherness”. Using a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, we analyze how current mediatizations of migration and conflict in East German cities link ethnosexual with spatio-cultural-historical frontiers. This interplay of multifaceted frontiers constitutes internal and external images of a cultural “other” and contributes to internal coherence within the sexually and racially imagined nation.

Why can a forest not be private? A post-socialist perspective on Polish forestry paradigms – an anthropological contribution

During the last few years (2016–2019) forestry in Poland has received special attention from domestic and international audiences. In particular, the conflict relating to the Bialowieza Forest in Eastern Poland has been widely covered by the media. Yet there reminds a lack of understanding relating to Polish forestry paradigms. There are only a few publications on the topic. Moreover, little empirical work on the current major conflicts in the Polish forest sector has been done. This paper uses an anthropological approach to analyse the main paradigm of forestry in Poland. It draws upon long-term research on Polish forestry and forest policy conducted 2012–2017. The aim of this paper is to analyse the developments in the paradigm of Polish forestry between 1989 and 2017 by applying a post-socialist perspective. The paper explores the main paradigm of contemporary forestry in Poland, particularly its element – the conviction that forests should be state owned – and interprets this conviction in the frame of the Transformation of 1989 and the consequent social circumstances. The social and cultural context of the Transformation is analysed as a historical period that triggered shifts in the values, targets and motivations of Polish foresters. By employing a post-socialist perspective to current developments related to forests, this research traces the (long-term) social consequences of this shift in the forestry paradigm in Poland. Conceptually, the research builds upon an environmental anthropology approach. It uses a combination of ethnographic methods (participant observation and 120 in-depth qualitative interviews) and a literature review of media sources, grey literature and legal documents. The analysis explores two levels of forestry: the institutional level of policies and politics, and the practical level of foresters in forests.

Masculinity, Care and Stay-Behind Fathers: A Postsocialist Perspective

Over the last two decades many studies have focused on female migrants’ transnational care practices, while those of stay-behind fathers have hardly been investigated. This chapter deals with masculinity, childcare and fatherhood of stay-behind male partners of female migrants from former socialist countries in Europe. A discussion of the particularities of gender regimes in socialist and postsocialist Europe will be followed by a presentation of three case studies on fatherhood and lone parenting. The article concludes with a discussion of “mothering fathers’” predicaments in a postsocialist situation.

Rethinking socialist and Marxist legacies in feminist imaginaries of protest from postsocialist perspectives

ABSTRACTThe article raises questions about the neoliberal discursive erasures of socialist and Marxist legacies in feminist histories and imaginaries of protest. However, far from promoting an uncritical recycling of feminist Marxisms and socialisms as they unfolded in feminist movements during the 1970s, the article instead reassesses these trends in feminist thought through the analytical lens of the revised notion of ‘postsocialism’ in focus of this special issue, aiming at unmooring it from addressing only the twentieth-century past of a particular geopolitical region, the ‘Second World’. To rethink feminist Marxisms and socialisms from the perspective of this revised notion of postsocialism, the article discusses how the erasure of Marxist and socialist legacies works in contemporary feminist histories with a particular focus on the Nordic countries and my past as a feminist socialist activist there. Moreover, a genealogical analysis of a couple of still centrally performing feminist thought figures – situated knowledges (Haraway) and de/naturalizations of gender/sex binaries (Butler) – is undertaken. The aim is to consider how these thought figures can be understood as postsocialist, when the ‘post’ is defined as marking a combination of resonance and critical transgression, as the ‘post’ in, for example, ‘post-structuralism’. Finally, the article addresses the troubled relationship of Marxism with whiteness, race, racism and Eurocentric understandings of histories of revolutionary transformation. In particular, the flaws of European socialisms and Marxisms, and their resonances with Eurocentric thought more generally, are addressed, while giving attention to their implications for a reassessment of Marxist and socialist legacies in feminism.

Cultivating alternative spaces – Zagreb’s community gardens in transition: From socialist to post-socialist perspective

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of community gardens in a (post)socialist setting during a time of key changes in their perception and management. Community gardens in Zagreb emerged in two specific economic and socio-cultural contexts and a diachronous approach to the study of urban gardens offers a unique insight into differences and similarities reflecting and contrasting those periods. Semi-structured interviews and non-participatory observation were employed. Results show that community gardens in Zagreb are multilayered places which satisfy diverse needs of the urban residents, including home grown food, socializing, recreation, contact with the nature, and supplementation for low pensions. They can also be seen as examples of heterotopias or alternative spaces during both examined periods. In the socialist period they were secluded, private, pseudo-rural places in a semi-authoritarian, communal, and (supposedly) urban and industrial society. In post-socialist Zagreb, characterized by an uncontrolled and unplanned spatial context reliant on neoliberal market-oriented principles, social insensitivity and exclusion, the new gardens are depicted as beacons of communal involvement, grassroots movements, and the ability of citizens to stand together and make their voices heard.

Urban Renewal in the Inner City of Budapest: Gentrification from a Post-socialist Perspective

After the political and economic changes of 1989–90, the concept of gentrification inspired many urban researchers in central and eastern Europe (CEE). Despite the growing number of papers, there is still a substantial empirical gap concerning the transformation of inner-city neighbourhoods in the CEE. This paper is based on empirical data regarding the physical and social upgrading of neighbourhoods in inner Budapest. The paper argues that gentrification in its traditional sense affects only smaller areas of the inner city, mostly those where demolition and new housing construction took place as an outcome of regeneration programmes. At the same time, the old housing stock has been less affected by gentrification. This is mainly due to the high share of owner-occupation and the social responsibility of local governments. Thanks to renovation and new housing construction, a healthy social mix will probably persist in the inner city of Budapest in the future.

From Metics to the Erased, or How to Ground Cosmopolitanism: A Post-Socialist Perspective on Current Theories of Cosmopolitanism

The paper is a critical contribution to contemporary theory of cosmopolitanism which takes into account specific socio-cultural and political contexts of postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe. It is argued that in order for cosmopolitanism to become effective politics and the practice of democratic citizenship, it has to be grounded in daily processes of negotiation of loyalty and patriotism to the national society. In this regard, it should not be conceptualised as nationalism’s other but rather as an alternative patriotic sentiment, which combines the global ethos of humanity and responsibility towards political and cultural organization of local social life. The paper illuminates this approach from the perspective of post-socialist citizenship in Slovenia and the tragic experience of the “erased”.

Nuevas teorías de la democracia de la democracia formal a la democracia deliberativa

Neoliberalism conceives of democracy in capitalist terms, deprived of its utopic and normative dimensions in the name of the market and efficiency. The resulting political model, restricted and neoconservative in nature, depoliticizes the concept of the citizen, negates state intervention, narrows the political environment, frees the economy from political interventions and deteriorates the meaning and reaching of the public sphere. Given this problematic, the article analyzes the plausibility of distinct theoretical reflections on democracy from a postliberal (Rawls), socialist (Habermas) and postsocialist perspective, based upon the Frankfurt School's third generation discussions of radical democracy, Negri and Hardt's analyses of real democracy, postmodern republicanism's disputatory democracy, and Touraine's liberation democracy. In this vein, the article also identifies democracy's escape points by examining this model's emancipatory potential through authors such as Agamben, Zizek and Virno.

Feminist Cross-Mainstreaming within ‘East–West’ Mapping

The article addresses the tempting questions around feminist cross-mainstreaming, keeping in mind that the feminist movement and feminist critical studies are deeply challenged by globalized marketing, boundary changes and displacements, and ‘over-genderization’. Taking feminist cross-mainstreaming into consideration not only as a concept and/or ‘act of normality’ at the threshold of the 21st century but also as a provocative stand for claiming authority across diverse worlds and boundaries, the author explores this through the problem of the globality of feminism in its contextualization and complexity; the status of feminism from a postsocialist perspective; and implications and potential obstacles of gender mainstreaming.

Post-Marxism in a Post-Socialist Perspective

Post-Marxism has been defined as the attempt to insist on the continuing value of Marxist thought while incorporating post-structuralist criticisms of holism. In this essay, I use a perspective developed through studying the contours of power in actually existing socialist and post-socialist regimes to critically examine three influential works in post-Marxism. While finding much of value in these books’ development of non-totalizing forms of social theory, I argue that they also reproduce some of the theoretical logics that plagued the worst moments of socialist governance. In particular, I take issue with their implicit assumptions about the performance of political identities in academic writing and the relationship of empirical research to social theory.

Is Gender - Women's Destiny? A Postsocialist Perspective

Is Gender - Women's Destiny? A Postsocialist Perspective

The Workers' Movement in a Possible Postsocialist Perspective

The independent workers' movement is acquiring increasing importance in the midst of the formidable development of economic, social, and political shocks that are gripping our country. Strictly speaking, it would be sufficient to say simply "workers' movement" because, in the first place, everything in society depends in one way or another on everything else and, second, there simply is no workers' movement other than the one now called independent. To be sure, the state-controlled trade unions that existed for decades and certain other organizations proclaimed themselves and considered themselves to be part of the workers' movement. But they were essentially specific elements of the party-state machine and considered their main task to be that of "drive belts" or "transmission belts" for conveying the party's political directives to rank-and-file workers who were not party members. The official Soviet trade unions took pride in their dependence on the Communist Party.