Ulrike Ziemer

Minority youth, everyday racism and public spaces in contemporary Russia

This article examines the impact of global change and post-Soviet political transformation on diasporic youth cultural practices and experience in Krasnodar, a city in southern Russia. While young Armenians’ leisure spaces are characterized by inclusive notions of ethnic plurality and tolerance, sometimes individuals are racialized or ethnicized when they pass through public spaces. Young Armenians’ leisure spaces are ethnically structured, but not ethnically exclusive. This article challenges the view that young people from ethnic minorities are passive recipients of everyday racism. Instead, it is suggested that young Armenians have routinized their responses to racism and xenophobia in their everyday practices, and so are able to undermine the dominant political discourse.

Tackling tensions and ambivalences: Armenian girls' diasporic identities in Russia.

Research on diasporic youth identities in the British and American context has stressed hybridity, heterogeneity and multiplicity. This paper draws upon ethnographic research undertaken with Armenian girls to explore some of the tensions and ambivalences of negotiating diasporic identities in the Russian context. Diasporic identities are constructed through gender, and this paper illustrates how research participants negotiate their identities in relation to both belonging to the Armenian community and wider Russian society. At the same time, this paper examines how research participants draw differently on diasporic identifications in order to overcome tensions and ambivalences in their everyday lives. The paper shows that research participants are not inclined to reject their cultural roots in favor of new hybrid identities, but are able to recognize and appropriate different cultures in their identity negotiations.

Narratives of Translocation, Dislocation and Location: Armenian Youth Cultural Identities in Southern Russia

Abstract The findings presented here are based on ethnographic research and are concerned with subjective definitions of ethnic belonging of young Armenians in Krasnodar krai. It is demonstrated that Armenian ethnic identifications are not ‘fixed’ but rather entwined within a complex web of diverse cultural attachments, involving many ‘routes’ of translocation, dislocation and location. It was found that most of the research participants saw themselves as Armenian while drawing occasionally on cosmopolitanism as an identity resource. This enabled them to construct a sense of belonging both in terms of ethnicity and of multicultural location.

Emotions, loss and change: Armenian womenand post-socialist transformations in NagornyKarabakh.

Based on empirical data obtained from ethnographic fieldwork in Nagorny Karabakh (NK), the article analyses gender as one fundamental but neglected dimension of post-conflict society. In particular, this article examines changing gender relations as a result of the political transformations occurring during and after the Karabakh conflict (1990–2000). The focus is on two groups of women residing in Martuni, a small town in NK. The first group includes local Armenian women, the second Armenian women from Azerbaijan, forced to resettle in Martuni. In this way, the article not only explores how the status of these women and their dependency has changed as a result of the political transformations, but also how gender roles and identities are negotiated when the region of resettlement is not completely unfamiliar to new arrivals. The article concludes by highlighting these Armenian women’s contradictory, yet similar experiences in terms of prevalent gender constructions. In doing so, the article expands research on gender and political transformations in post-socialist regions and beyond.

Opportunities for Self-Realisation?: Young Women’s Experiences of Higher Education in Russia

This chapter explores the experiences of young women in higher education in post-Soviet Russia. Alongside interviews with educational experts, this research includes in-depth interviews with 15 female university students and five recent graduates. The empirical analysis is set within wider debates regarding reflexive modernisation and individualisation. While research participants demonstrate agency and choice, these were not always supported by resources and opportunities, especially when it comes to the emerging higher education system which is entrenched in corruption. This chapter shows that these young women deal with these constraints and challenges in complex and ‘individualised’ ways.

“The waiting and not knowing can be agonizing”: tracing the power of emotions in a prolonged conflict in the South Caucasus

ABSTRACT Moving beyond the usual strategic and national issues of war in international relations, feminist theorizing on aspects of war has stressed the pressing need to depict it as something experienced by individuals. This study addresses this need by considering the critical case of the protracted conflict over the Nagorny Karabakh region in the South Caucasus. Despite the 1994 ceasefire, no satisfactory settlement for all the parties involved in the conflict has yet been reached. In fact, since the four-day war in April 2016, the situation has become even more tense, with an increased risk of renewed hostilities. This article uses empirical research with women in Nagorny Karabakh to examine the impact of this protracted conflict through an analysis of emotions in their everyday lives. It argues that fear, grief and trauma not only affect individual women but also create a collective identity amongst them that is defined by compliance with the heightened militarization of society in this region. In this way, this study shows that emotions feed into the persistence of patriarchal relations. By exploring women’s emotions, this article contributes to the growing literature in international relations that examines war as lived experience.

Explaining the pattern of Russian authoritarian diffusion in Armenia

ABSTRACT The literature dealing with the international dimensions of authoritarianism suggests that regional hegemons may exploit linkage and leverage to counter democracy and diffuse authoritarian ideas and practices. However, there is a need for more research on whether authoritarian diffusion is actually happening, including the circumstances under which linkage and leverage are translated (or not) into policy convergence. This article addresses these shortcomings by examining the high-value case of Armenia – a country with growing levels of dependence on Russia following its rejection of the European Union’s Association Agreement in 2013 and accession to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union in 2015. Drawing on a combination of original elite and expert interviews, this article argues that although there is evidence of Russian authoritarian diffusion, there is limited evidence of policy convergence. Instead, material incentives and concerns over legitimacy continue to privilege democratic norms and make the costs of Russian-style restrictive legislation prohibitive for incumbents.

Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities

THiS BOOK iS A HiGHLY ReADABLe eTHNOGRAPHiC ACCOUNT OF LeSBiAN and bisexual women’s lives in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. it is a timely book which presents a valuable contribution to gender and sexuality studies, as well as to the literature on socialism and post-socialism. The empirical base of this monograph is the use of multiple research methods, such as participant observation and interviews, in two different fieldwork sites. Moscow and Ul’yanovsk represent ‘strikingly different urban settings in terms of size, living standards and the presence or absence of a gay scene’ (p. 9). while Moscow, as the capital of Russia, has a relatively established gay scene, Ul’yanovsk is a provincial city which has struggled to recover from the disturbances of the economic transition and lacks an established gay scene. This book is a seminal contribution to the study of post-conflict societies. Still, the study could have benefited from an alternative research design that relied less on description and focused on systematising empirical evidence towards some assessment of causality. The analysis of individual interventions discusses actors, actions, interactions, and results, yet refrains from providing a plausible theory of change. it could also be argued that the extremity of violence in Srebrenica renders this municipality an outlier context for the study of post-conflict social repair. even though it is valuable as an ‘extreme case study’, identifying its specificities and teasing out more generalised arguments would require a comparative approach, incorporating additional cases from Bosnia or beyond. Admittedly, Nettelfield and wagner partly pre-empt these observations by recognising both the uniqueness of post-genocide environments and the difficulty of making bold claims about social repair recipes. They explicitly state that they not only aim to examine how to fix a broken state, but also aspire ‘to give voice to survivors, explaining their disappointment and their burden’ (p. 29), while acknowledging the ‘disconnect between the experiences of the survivors and members of the Bosnian society and the intellectual exercise of assessing what works and what does not’ (p. 29). This, however, calls for a final point of critique: the one-sided emphasis on Srebrenica’s Bosniak community and its limitations. Social repair—the phenomenon analysed—is a bidirectional and reciprocal process, especially at the grassroots level. The narrow focus on a single constitutive ethnic group undermines the quest for a well-rounded analysis. while subtle mechanisms of neighbourly relations’ restoration are identified and examined—such as the category of ‘the decent people’ (p. 106)—these are exclusively extracted from Bosniak accounts. even if the impartiality of the authors is unquestionable when presenting the survivors’ views, the inclusion of the view of deniers, or the secretly remorseful, or those suffering from cognitive dissonance—sometimes victims themselves—could inform the analysis with important insights. Overall, Nettelfield and wagner’s contribution has important implications for the forthcoming literature on post-conflict reconstruction. The study abandons the macro analysis of social repair and emphasises instrumental action coming from a diverse ensemble of actors—local, national and international. it also encourages a research stream consisting of the focused, longitudinal analysis of interventions in a single locality in a way that recognises interdependency, complementarity and interconnectivity. it thus refutes the idea that the sequencing of reforms in the aftermath of conflict is largely pre-determined. This book challenges preconceived ideas about the nature of international humanitarianism and chooses to emphasise the complexities, paradoxes and distresses that accompany reluctant nation-building.

Gazing at Welfare, Gender and Agency in Post-Socialist Countries

transfer of wealth in which officials were able to siphon off a share of the resulting windfall profits’ (p. 198). One of the major conclusions one can arrive at after reading Wedeman’s work is that corruption in China is there to stay. It has been transforming over the course of economic and political development and will no doubt continue on its path of transformation and adaptation to changing economic and political realities. This book is not free of minor shortcomings. Nevertheless, it is perhaps one of the best books on corruption in a developing economy written over the last two decades. The strongest feature of the book is its comprehensiveness, supported by the author’s clear long-standing expertise in the region. Wedeman claims a decade and a half work on this book, including a significant amount of field work, and he should be acclaimed for his successful effort. In addition to researchers, scholars and graduate students, the book may be highly recommended for those who want to do business with China or invest in this rapidly growing economy and look beyond mere clichés in order to understand the background processes that shape different socio-economic phenomena, including such long-term phenomena as corruption.