SOC026000 Archives

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

*** Winner: EASA Early Career Award 2018 ***

What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, allowing for new opportunities for recuperation.

Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: a street market in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a multi-purpose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses difficult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has avoided promoting a single narrative of the past.

By exploring these places of cultural and historical significance, which all contribute to our understanding of how the new generation in Estonia is not following the expectations and values of its predecessor, the book also demonstrates how we can understand generational change in a material sense.

Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe

Europe is a popular destination for LGBTQ people seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. Yet, while European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities and a number of states pride themselves on their acceptance of sexual diversity, the image of European tolerance and the reality faced by LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers are often quite different.

To engage with these conflicting discourses, Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe brings together scholars from politics, sociology, urban studies, anthropology and law to analyse how and why queer individuals migrate to or seek asylum in Europe, as well as the legal, social and political frameworks they are forced to navigate to feel at home or to regularise their status in the destination societies. The subjects covered include LGBTQ Latino migrants’ relationship with queer and diasporic spaces in London; diasporic consciousness of queer Polish, Russian and Brazilian migrants in Berlin; the role of the Council of Europe in shaping legal and policy frameworks relating to queer migration and asylum; the challenges facing bisexual asylum seekers; queer asylum and homonationalism in the Netherlands; and the role of space, faith and LGBTQ organisations in Germany, Italy, the UK and France in supporting queer asylum seekers.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3

For a post-human hitchhiker, human life – with its anxiety, ageing, illness and constant need for problem-solving – may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by human touch, human emotion and human cooperation.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 continues the journey of the two previous volumes into the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices. It focuses on issues of emotional ambivalence and pressures of the digital age. The informal practices presented in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and the need to tackle the central problem of modern societies – uncertainty.

The volume takes a reader on a ‘biographical’ journey through elusive, taken-for-granted or banal ways of getting things done from over 70 countries and world regions. It offers innovative understanding of the significance of fringes, and challenges the assumption that informality is associated exclusively with poverty, underdevelopment, the Global South, oppressive regimes or the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also maps the patterns of informality around the globe; identifies specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way; and documents their ambivalent impact on people engaged in problem-solving, on societies in which these problems arise, and on humanity overall.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 1

Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery, to explore society’s open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world, yet underestimated in policy. Entries from the five continents featured in this volume are samples of the truly global and ever-growing collection, made possible by a remarkable collaboration of over 200 scholars across disciplines and area studies.

By mapping the grey zones, blurred boundaries, types of ambivalence and contexts of complexity, this book creates the first Global Map of Informality. The accompanying database is searchable by region, keyword or type of practice, so do explore what works, how, where and why!

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2

Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery to explore society’s open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world, yet underestimated in policy. Entries from the five continents presented in this volume are samples of the truly global and ever-growing collection, made possible by a remarkable collaboration of over 200 scholars across disciplines and area studies.

By mapping the grey zones, blurred boundaries, types of ambivalence and contexts of complexity, this book creates the first Global Map of Informality. The accompanying database ([www.in-formality.com][1]) is searchable by region, keyword or type of practice, so do explore what works, how, where and why!

Central Peripheries

Central Peripheries explores post-Soviet Central Asia through the prism of nation-building. Although relative latecomers on the international scene, the Central Asian states see themselves as globalized, and yet in spite of – or perhaps precisely because of – this, they hold a very classical vision of the nation-state, rejecting the abolition of boundaries and the theory of the ‘death of the nation’. Their unabashed celebration of very classical nationhoods built on post-modern premises challenges the Western view of nationalism as a dying ideology that ought to have been transcended by post-national cosmopolitanism.

Marlene Laruelle looks at how states in the region have been navigating the construction of a nation in a post-imperial context where Russia remains the dominant power and cultural reference. She takes into consideration the ways in which the Soviet past has influenced the construction of national storylines, as well as the diversity of each state’s narratives and use of symbolic politics. Exploring state discourses, academic narratives and different forms of popular nationalist storytelling allows Laruelle to depict the complex construction of the national pantheon in the three decades since independence. The second half of the book focuses on Kazakhstan as the most hybrid national construction and a unique case study of nationhood in Eurasia.

Based on the principle that only multidisciplinarity can help us to untangle the puzzle of nationhood, Central Peripheries uses mixed methods, combining political science, intellectual history, sociology and cultural anthropology. It is inspired by two decades of fieldwork in the region and a deep knowledge of the region’s academia and political environment.

The Ambivalence of Power in the Twenty-First Century Economy

The Ambivalence of Power in the Twenty-First Century Economy contributes to the understanding of the ambivalent nature of power, oscillating between conflict and cooperation, public and private, global and local, formal and informal, and does so from an empirical perspective. It offers a collection of country-based cases, as well as critically assesses the existing conceptions of power from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The diverse analyses of power at the macro, meso or micro levels allow the volume to highlight the complexity of political economy in the twenty-first century. Each chapter addresses key elements of that political economy (from the ambivalence of the cases of former communist countries that do not conform with the grand narratives about democracy and markets, to the dual utility of new technologies such as face-recognition), thus providing mounting evidence for the centrality of an understanding of ambivalence in the analysis of power, especially in the modern state power-driven capitalism.

Anchored in economic sociology and political economy, this volume aims to make ‘visible’ the dimensions of power embedded in economic practices. The chapters are predominantly based on post-communist practices, but this divergent experience is relevant to comparative studies of how power and economy are interrelated.

The Other Garment Industry

The Other Garment Industry sheds light on an economic, social and political phenomenon in Latin America, which is well known in the region, yet largely overlooked in social sciences literature. The volume analyses a regional configuration of informal garment production, distribution and consumption which cannot be explained by the dominant paradigm of global chains. This volume is pioneering in providing a holistic account of a specific industrial configuration in Latin America, showcasing this type of economy in Argentina, Brazil and Peru, and brings examples of trade in neighbouring countries such as Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay.

The volume focuses on three pillars of this economy: downstream entrepreneurs, bustling garment marketplaces and far-reaching national and regional trade routes. Far from the conventional image of sweatshops as monotonous spaces where creativity is reserved for big brands, the volume reveals workshops where design, trend-sensing and production are tightly woven together around consumer desires and imaginaries. Within these productive units, a differentiated division of labour makes room for experimentation, style innovation and rapid responses to shifting tastes. The garments travel through large, informal marketplaces expressly devoted to low-cost fashion, where traders and buyers meet in dense, dynamic circuits of exchange. These garment-oriented marketplaces, linked to extended informal trade routes, become crucial connectors that compress distribution chains, lower costs and expand access to affordable fashion for broad segments of the population.

Russian Pendulum

In Russian Pendulum, Alena Ledeneva takes readers on a compelling journey to Russia, where tradition, modernity, power and people collide. Through the prism of ambivalence, the author unveils patterns that have shaped Russia’s politics and society for centuries, pointing to an intricate system of informal networks that are held together by practices of cooptation, control and camouflage.

For readers seeking to look beyond stereotypes, this book provides a brief yet nuanced exploration of Russia’s complexity and unpredictability. The ever-moving Russian pendulum dwells on paradoxes and the hidden practices that resolve them. Patterns such as doublethink, double standards, zigzags, cascades, waves and tides are captured in the author’s own artworks that introduce each chapter.

Nine musical compositions by Benjamin Woodgates add a further dimension, exploring these paradoxes, practices and patterns, and realising them in sound.

Drawing on the Global Informality Project (www.in-formality.com), the artwork and the music, Russian Pendulum establishes connections between Russia’s distinctive paradoxes and broader patterns of informality found worldwide. It is ideal for students, scholars and anyone seeking to understand hidden yet increasingly powerful forces.

Sustainable Food Systems

Faced with a global threat to food security, it is perfectly possible that society will respond, not by a dystopian disintegration, but rather by reasserting co-operative traditions. **This book, by a leading expert in urban agriculture, offers a genuine solution to today’s global food crisis. By contributing more to feeding themselves, cities can allow breathing space for the rural sector to convert to more organic sustainable approaches.

Biel’s approach connects with current debates about agroecology and food sovereignty, asks key questions, and proposes lines of future research. He suggests that today’s food insecurity – manifested in a regime of wildly fluctuating prices – reflects not just temporary stresses in the existing mode of production, but more profoundly the troubled process of generating a new one. He argues that the solution cannot be implemented at a merely technical or political level: the force of change can only be driven by the kind of social movements which are now daring to challenge the existing unsustainable order.

Drawing on both his academic research and teaching, and 15 years’ experience as a practicing urban farmer, Biel brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to this key global issue, creating a dialogue between the physical and social sciences.