Tatjana Thelen

Shortage, fuzzy property and other dead ends in the anthropological analysis of (post)socialism

The article begins with the observation that, despite almost ideal conditions, anthropological research on postsocialism has had little impact on general theoretical debates. One reason for this development, it will be argued, can be found in earlier interpretations of socialism that continue to have an effect on the field by obstructing innovative conceptualizations. The appropriation of ideas derived from neo-institutionalism by anthropologists produced analyses that found both socialism and postsocialism to be deficient. Thereby the ambivalent construction of the socialist ‘other’ allowed the general focus on economics to appear unproblematic. Following the introduction of Western institutions into formerly socialist contexts, the analytical focus shifted from old ‘different’ and ‘inefficient’ institutions to now ‘inefficient’ or at least ‘different’ actors. Taking the example of work relations, the article shows that only by overcoming these normative assumptions about the ‘other’ can anthropologists begin to question implicit knowledge and thereby open the possibility for new theorizing.

‘The sleep has been rubbed from their eyes’: social citizenship and the reproduction of local hierarchies in rural Hungary and Romania

In this paper, we make three interrelated points. First, while much of the recent literature on new forms of citizenship has focused on the diversity of large cities and new forms of migration, we seek to establish rural sites as important arenas for negotiating citizenship. We stress that far from being homogeneous, villages in their struggles over belonging are affected by long-standing diversity as well as global discourses. Second, we seek to complicate the interpretation of the demise of socialism as a radical break manifested in a diminished role of the state. We show that if the central state retreats, local state actors may gain in importance for local negotiations of citizenship. Third, we explore how the local state actors sometimes use their new powers over social rights to recreate boundaries of belonging through public performances tied to the administration of these rights. We go on to explore the normative basis for these performances and indicate that membership is still based on a contribution of work to the common good. This can best be conceptualised as a shifting continuity rather than a sharp break after 1989.

Law and Mutual Assistance in Families: A Comparison of Socialist Legacies in Hungary and Eastern Germany

Abstract In this article it is argued that post-socialist reforms actually led to more similarity in the legal sphere between Hungary and eastern Germany than during the socialist phase. Despite some similarities regarding their respective official representations of gender equality during the socialist period, Hungary and the former GDR in fact had quite distinct policies. As the Hungarian policies and ideologies resemble those in the former West Germany, and because East Germany has taken on the legal system of West Germany as a result of unification, both countries are now becoming more similar in legal terms in some areas than before. However, the socialist differences have not vanished, but still account for different situations of legal pluralism today. People still employ socialist practices, and norms guiding the cases demonstrate a process in which former state law turns into new customary law. The article concentrates on fields related to a gendered understanding of property and motherhood. Selected examples of family assistance and conflict in Hungary and eastern Germany in the aftermath of legal reforms reveal different patterns of interpretation and integration of the socialist past. The first part of this article deals with the changing significance and interpretation of landed property and its inheritance in structuring family relations. In both localities landed property is basically interpreted as male property. With post-socialist property reforms, this normative orientation translates seemingly easily into a shift of power to the oldest male in the family in rural Hungary. In contrast, in the German cases, new conflicts are often based on gendered claims to property, and in many cases are interpreted within the framework of East-West German differences. The second part seeks to complicate that picture by reference to the connection of this field of legal reform with the field of family policies and the consequences of different socialist legacies. Family policies in Hungary, it is argued, prepared the ground for the long-term and in fact undesired retreat of mothers into the household. In contrast, socialist policies led to shorter maternity leave in the GDR and more female labour market participation. As a result, women are more focused on wage labour and are strongly supported by their parents to go out to work. In a situation in which large parts of the eastern German population are confronted with gender images and legal arrangements that resemble those of socialist Hungary, many opt for the ‘East German’ socialist gender mode.

Violence and social (dis)continuity: comparing collectivization in two East European villages

Why study the collectivization process once again when it was undone with the restoration of private land ownership and therefore apparently proved outdated by history? This article argues that it is precisely this reintroduction of private property which shows the proceedings of collectivization in a new light and allows fresh insights into the role of violence for social change. Conversely, some puzzling local developments during the period of privatization in the 1990s only become understandable in the light of events that took place in the 1950s. After the events of 1989, among the first decisions of nearly all new post-socialist governments was the restructuring of agricultural production. One main task was to reinvent private property, which was based not only on economic considerations, but was also meant to compensate for past suffering, especially the loss of land in the 1950s. Different countries chose different legal solutions depending on their socialist past and on different actors with specific interests and political influence. But the actual implementation of state policies also depended, as this article will show, on essentially local factors which were influenced by the very early practices of collectivization. Collectivization changed rural communities everywhere in that it had a decisive impact on agrarian production, population flow and social relations. However, it did so to different extents. As the comparison of two ethnic Hungarian communities on both sides of the Hungarian–Romanian border illustrates, elements of the pre-socialist value system and social hierarchy could survive under certain conditions and influence the post-socialist privatization process, sometimes in contrast to national law. The comparison also makes obvious that the conditions for differences in social reproduction are influenced by the duration of periods during which the implementation of state policies seemed to be arbitrary and unforeseeable, especially if violent means lost parts of their social embeddedness. Violence usually is socially embedded, i.e. moral values, norms and institutional arrangements set limits to its use. Crossing the boundaries of what is accepted in a given

Economic concepts, common grounds and 'new' diversity in the anthropology of post-socialism: reply to Dunn and Verdery

In a recent article published in Critique of Anthropology (Thelen, 2011), I tried to offer some explanations for the lack of impact studies of post-socialism have had on anthropological theory. To my own surprise, the article has prompted many reactions and I am grateful for the inspiring, suggestive and thoughtful comments that I have received over the past few months. I am especially thankful to Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Katherine Verdery for their response to my article, which allows me to reiterate and clarify some of my central arguments. In the article I argued that one reason for the limited theoretical impact was the combination of an ambivalent construction of the socialist Other with the dominance of an economic analysis of socialism in the late 1980s. These two factors shaped studies of post-socialism, which took as their starting point a regional definition of the area of interest and a specific view of socialism’s difference from western capitalism. The dominance of an economic analysis is unusual for the discipline of anthropology. Such an analysis became possible in the field of (post-)socialism through the writings of Katherine Verdery in particular. Her studies deserve enormous credit for introducing the work of János Kornai (and that of other Eastern and Central European intellectuals) to a wider anthropological audience. There are some peculiarities, however, associated with the impact of his concepts in the field of (post-)socialism. The most significant is that the adaptation of his economic theory normalized capitalism, while socialism and its social relations appeared as the ‘deficient’ Other. Thus, in contrast to Dunn and Verdery, who state that: ‘The

Traditionalisierung in der Flexibilisierung: familiäre Arbeitsteilung in Ostdeutschland

Bereits seit mehreren Jahrzehnten wird die Flexibilisierung oder auch Destandardisierung von beruflichen und familiaren Lebenslaufen in der so genannten „Post-“ oder „Zweiten“ Moderne postuliert (Musner 2002, Kohli 2003). Im Verlauf der Diskussion sind neben uberwiegend positiven Bewertungen im Sinne der Loslosung aus traditionellen Abhangigkeiten und der Entfaltung individueller Lebensentwurfe (Thien 2002: 19, siehe auch Beck/Beck-Gernsheim 1994) in den 1990er Jahre verstarkt negative Interpretationen des Verlusts von Sicherheit und des Verlusts von individueller Stabilitat und Bindungsfahigkeit hinzu gekommen (Sennett 1998). Empirische Studien belegen die Dramatik der popularen Zeitdiagnosen nicht unbedingt, dennoch wird Flexibilisierung tendenziell als Aufhebung traditioneller Bindungen, Individualisierung und manchmal auch Angleichung weiblicher und mannlicher Lebenslaufe gedeutet.

Political belonging through elderly care: Temporalities, representations and mutuality

In this article, we examine the ways that elderly care generates political belonging. Our approach builds on studies which argue that nurture and care create kinship, but takes that argument further by suggesting that care generates membership in numerous social formations, across scales. We suggest that elderly care helps illuminate key aspects of political belonging, particularly the temporality of political membership, because elderly care entails mutuality and reciprocity over a long period of time. In addition, elderly care is an interactive process in which older persons, their caregivers, the state and other actors negotiate modes of political belonging that entail affect as well as rights. Furthermore, elderly care has been used to construct representations of ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ families which are ideologically connected to particular political formations. These representations generate difference and ‘Othering’ of internal and external populations. Ultimately, we argue that a focus on elderly care collapses domains that are usually kept artificially separated, like kinship and the state, and private and public, in ways that are productive for social analysis as a whole.

Care of the Elderly, Migration, Community: Explorations From Rural Romania

It was a while before I realized that this casual remark, made by an elderly woman in a Romanian village during our conversation in August 2010, was based on experiences with care migration and contained a profound commentary about self-understandings in and of the community. This was only the first in a series of conversations I conducted ten years after my initial fieldwork, in which villagers informed me about instances of care migration out of their village to various countries in Western Europe. These diverse allusions to care migration helped me understand that in this village out-migration serves as a backdrop against which the “right way” of caring for the elderly could be understood, constituting a vital element in the construction of what is a “good” community. In this regard “our” practice of employing care migrants for the elderly in private homes in Germany—my country of origin—was seen as superior to “their” putting old people into institutionalized care in the village. While the great majority of the elderly in both countries are still cared for at home and by their families, these exchanges reveal not only the challenges that female out-migration may have posed in particular instances, but also how new information and images relating to Western care practices have emerged in the process. The latter feeds into an us/them binary that has ultimately contributed to a profound collateral shift in the self-representation within and of the community.

The Anthropology of Sibling Relations

Since the 1990s, after a gap following David Schneider’s critique (1984), there has been a remarkable revival of kinship in anthropology. The new kinship studies shifted interest to practices, processes, and meanings in contrast to a previous focus on jural rights and obligations, kin terms, and structures. Within this efflorescence of the literature, certain issues have dominated, while others have been largely overlooked. Exciting issues entailing moral and legal dilemmas or contesting biological notions of kinship dominate the research agenda. These include reproductive technologies (Rapp 1999, Franklin and Ragone 1998), international adoption and the constructions and surrogates of parenthood (Howell 2006, Leinaweaver 2008, Marre and Briggs 2009, Stryker 2010, Yngvesson 2010), and “new” legally recognised forms of alliance (Smith 2001, Weston 1991). Their common ground is to highlight how kinship is produced through social practices rather than determined by the physical act of birth.

Self-sacrifice or natural donation? A life course perspective on grandmothering in new zagreb (Croatia) and east Berlin (Germany)

In this article we explore grandmaternal care and its interpretations in two European capitals of former socialist countries, Zagreb and Berlin. We describe the scope and variety of grandmaternal care practices both field sites and then contrast two grandmotherly interpretations of their intensive caring for grandchildren The different appraisal of their similar practice as self-sacrifice and natural donation respectively is embedded in different life course experiences of these two women. Both grandmothers lived in socialist states and made the experience of profound change with political and economic restructuring. But while socialist eastern Germany and Croatia had many similar traits they also differed in important aspects. While our interlocutors attributed their practice generally to post-socialist developments, they based their judgements on different aspects of state responsibility. While demographic developments might create similar opportunities for child care, national and local contexts vary and local actors attribute different meanings to their action.