This thesis explores different geographies of tourism, gender, work and liveli­hood in post-socialist Latvia. The study puts focus on the overall transforma­tion process and the reshaping of the tourism sector, in how Latvia is reimag­ined both as a nation state and as a tourism destination. One central aim is to analyse the transformation process as genderised, and how existing gender identi­ties in general and femininities more specifically are being transformed and mirrored within tourism. The thesis first contain an analysis of how Latvian tourism-mar­ket­ing carries genderised meanings and identities, based on three interrelated ‘geog­raphies’ as part of the transforming ‘national common space’: geogra­phies of neo-nationalism, geographies of Euro­peanisation and geographies of relic-communism. These hold certain imaginations and conceptions of space and place, and in­clude aims and priorities of the transition process. Secondly, focus is placed on the chang­ing conditions for women’s livelihood within rural tourism in the Cēsis district, and spa/health tourism in Jūrmala. The thesis has mainly a quali­tative approach, including semi-structured interviews and text analysis, but the case studies also comprise a survey. The thesis illustrates how tourism becomes an arena for reclaiming a Latvian national identity rooted in a pre-Soviet past, while also manifesting a Western European identity, and negotiating the remains of the controversial Soviet heritage. This process reveals, for example, traditional feminised features of the nation state, portraying women as the ‘mothers’ of the nation. Two case studies of female employees and entrepreneurs within rural tourism and spa/health tourism also show how women negotiate different ideals of femininities, in­cluding ‘traditional’, ‘Western’ and ‘socialist’ ideals, through their everyday live­lihood practices within both the public and the private sphere. Their negotia­tions for a more independent liveli­hood are also affected by structural factors, such as wages and taxes, but also by the local socio-cultural context and related gender identities, including class, family structure, age and ethnicity.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to study how nonhuman agents are introduced and employed as a replacement for social reproduction by analyzing the environment and types of exchange practiced in the countryside of post-socialist Russia. The farm where my fieldwork took place exhibits many types of exchange, among which cryptocurrencies, seen as a socio- material algorithm, are used for the redistribution of essential goods and/or favors in a method similar to those used in former socialist and post-socialist economies. Drawing from the anthropological discussion on gift-commodity logic in the area, I look at cryptocurrencies as a hybrid - they hold the qualities of a gift (authority, name) and could be used to speculate with on the crypto stock-exchange (commodity). Key words: alternative economies, post-socialism, cryptocurrencies, algorithms, sociomateriality

Pflum, Dorina (2021). Self-identity and Agenda of Environmental Civil Organisations within the Hungarian Political Context  Human Geography advanced level, master thesis for master exam in Human Geography, 30 ECTS credits  Supervisor: Lowe Börjeson Language: English Key words: identity, post-environmentalism, post-socialism, civil movements, environmentalism. The research presents a case study of Hungarian environmental civil organisations, highlighting particularities of a post-soviet trajectory and nationalistic discourse hostile to the civil sector. The aims of the research are to establish how organisations formulate their agenda and representation, and how they position themselves in the socio-political context. My research questions explored 1) What role do environmental civil organisations play in the sustainability discourse of Hungary and how that changed since 1989? 2) How do the current government’s attitude and activity impact the work of the organisations? 3) How do different organisations construct their identity? Utilising a constructivist approach with qualitative methodology, I conducted 11 interviews with members of 4 organisations. Reflecting on the ideas of postenvironmentalism, I found that the hostility of the government constricts the reinvention of an efficient movement but prompts the organisations to take an innovative approach. However, most changes are involuntary, reacting to external pressures and more deliberate planning is needed.

This thesis presents a theoretical and historical account of how artists have responded to politics of democracy since the late-1980s. Three questions guide the direction of this analysis. Firstly: why, during its apparent apotheosis in recent years, have numerous artists critiqued democracy as the political, critical and aesthetic frame within which to identify their work? Secondly: how have artists undertaken this critique? Thirdly, and most importantly: what aesthetic and political discourses have artists proposed in lieu of the democracy that they critique? Particular case studies of art from Europe help us to address these questions, for Europe has been an important crucible for vociferous, and often fraught, arguments about democracy in recent aesthetic, philosophical and political discourses. The first chapter of this thesis rigorously contextualises these discourses in relation to historical mobilisations of democracy since the Iron Curtain??s collapse. Relying on writings by Pat Simpson, Slavoj ??i??ek, Alain Badiou and Mario Tronti, I chart the significant imbrications of political ideology, philosophy and what I call ??aesthetics of democratisation?? from the end of European communism, through the democratisations of postcommunism to the militarised democratisations of Iraq and Afghanistan after 2001. Notions of democracy shift and change during this period, becoming what ??i??ek calls a problematic ??transcendental guarantee?? of assumed values and self-legitimation. These shifting values in turn propel the concurrent critiques of democracy that are the subjects of the five subsequent chapters: Ilya Kabakov??s ??total?? installations; Neue Slowenische Kunst??s mimicry of the nation-state during the 1990s; Thomas Hirschhorn??s large-scale works from the late-1990s onwards; Christoph B??chel and Gianni Motti??s collaborative ventures; and the co-operative practices of Dan and Lia Perjovschi. Through examination of the artists?? installations and voluminous writings, and based primarily on archival research and interviews, this thesis examines how their aesthetic politics emerge from the remobilisation of nonconformist art histories, through self-instituted contexts and alternative models for art production, exhibition and interpretation. These models, I argue, counter our usual understandings of art practice and its politics in Europe. They cumulatively assert ??postsocialist aesthetics?? as an impertinent, yet urgent, prism through which to analyse contemporary art.

This thesis presents a theoretical and historical account of how artists have responded to politics of democracy since the late-1980s. Three questions guide the direction of this analysis. Firstly: why, during its apparent apotheosis in recent years, have numerous artists critiqued democracy as the political, critical and aesthetic frame within which to identify their work? Secondly: how have artists undertaken this critique? Thirdly, and most importantly: what aesthetic and political discourses have artists proposed in lieu of the democracy that they critique? Particular case studies of art from Europe help us to address these questions, for Europe has been an important crucible for vociferous, and often fraught, arguments about democracy in recent aesthetic, philosophical and political discourses. The first chapter of this thesis rigorously contextualises these discourses in relation to historical mobilisations of democracy since the Iron Curtain??s collapse. Relying on writings by Pat Simpson, Slavoj ??i??ek, Alain Badiou and Mario Tronti, I chart the significant imbrications of political ideology, philosophy and what I call ??aesthetics of democratisation?? from the end of European communism, through the democratisations of postcommunism to the militarised democratisations of Iraq and Afghanistan after 2001. Notions of democracy shift and change during this period, becoming what ??i??ek calls a problematic ??transcendental guarantee?? of assumed values and self-legitimation. These shifting values in turn propel the concurrent critiques of democracy that are the subjects of the five subsequent chapters: Ilya Kabakov??s ??total?? installations; Neue Slowenische Kunst??s mimicry of the nation-state during the 1990s; Thomas Hirschhorn??s large-scale works from the late-1990s onwards; Christoph B??chel and Gianni Motti??s collaborative ventures; and the co-operative practices of Dan and Lia Perjovschi. Through examination of the artists?? installations and voluminous writings, and based primarily on archival research and interviews, this thesis examines how their aesthetic politics emerge from the remobilisation of nonconformist art histories, through self-instituted contexts and alternative models for art production, exhibition and interpretation. These models, I argue, counter our usual understandings of art practice and its politics in Europe. They cumulatively assert ??postsocialist aesthetics?? as an impertinent, yet urgent, prism through which to analyse contemporary art.

This thesis is about the construction of a nationalised public Catholic culture in Slovakia from 1985 to 1993. At the core of this culture was the assumption that the Catholic Church had always been an integral part of the Slovak nation, her past, her present and her future. The thesis seeks to answer the question of who created this culture during the 1980s and 1990s and how and why they did so. To answer these questions this thesis adopts a cultural approach and explores how this culture was created utilising the concepts of collective memory, symbols and events as its main analytical tools. The data for this analysis include, but are not restricted to, materials produced in relation to various commemorative events and pilgrimages, especially those related to the leading national Catholic symbols: the National Patroness Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows and Saints Cyril and Methodius. The thesis argues that this culture was deliberately constructed from the point of view of many actors. Before 1989 these included the official Catholic hierarchy, underground Catholic Church communities, the pope and nationalist Communists. After 1989 these actors continued to construct this culture even as their positions of power changed. Most notably, underground Catholics became part of current ecclesiastical and political elite, and communist nationalists dissociated themselves from the Communist Party but retained their position within the cultural and political elite. The thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter looks at how the nationalised public Catholic culture started in the mid-1980s with underground Catholic communities that focused on culture and grassroots mobilisation. The second chapter looks at how the nationalist Communists and the official church hierarchy became involved in construction of parts of this culture and how their involvement resonated with the underground Catholic communities. Chapter Three examines how this culture continued to develop in the early 1990s in a new political context, and how it contributed to a broader cultural legitimisation of Slovak independence.

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No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which Muslims in Russia’s Povolzhye region define, and strive towards, spiritual and material well-being. It explores how pious subjectivities are cultivated in a secular and often politically hostile environment. In addition, it deals with Povolzhye Muslims’s pursuit of worldly success in the context of social change brought about by Russia’s transition to a market economy. Povolzhye is a prosperous, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional historical region, home to Russia’s second largest ethnic group, the Volga Tatars. Although the Tatars have been Sunni Muslims for centuries, the post-Soviet emergence of cosmopolitan, scripturalist piety trends – which I collectively refer to as Povolzhye’s ‘halal movement’ – has raised unprecedented concerns and disputes about the meaning of Muslimness and the place of Muslims in Russian society. Scripturalist virtue-ethics projects have been underrepresented within the expanding body of anthropological literature concerning Islam in the former USSR, and particularly in the Russian Federation. With its explicit ethnographic focus on Povolzhye’s halal movement, this work aims at filling this gap. The halal movement is characterised by its hypermodern transnational imagery as well as significant discursive overlapping with the realms of business and economy. The pursuit of a virtuous existence is particularly appealing to those ascending sectors of society that most successfully engage with Russia’s post-socialist free-market environment, while the idiom of piety both communicates and dissimulates novel forms of stratification and exclusion. This project brings together anthropological theories of ethical self-cultivation with approaches that focus on power, social change, and political economy. In order to explore the political life of the halal movement vis-à-vis both state institutions and the market, I employ Giorgio Agamben’s notions of ‘form-of-life’ and ‘rule/law’, which shed light on the relationship between power and virtue in original ways. In addition, particular attention is given to the social distribution of virtue and the role it plays in reproducing distinction, status, and a ‘capitalist spirit’.

This dissertation explores entanglements of body, national identity and nature in contemporary Mongolia. The project is situated within the rising popularity of natural remedies and alternative medicine during a time described as disorganized (zambaraagui) and disorderly. Data was collected from 33 months of fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar and elsewhere, focused on non-biomedical practices and therapeutic landscapes, especially medicinal springs (arshaan) and their sanatoria. This work contributes to studies of post-socialist Mongolia in a few ways. The methodological decision to engage in interview and participant observation of fortunetellers (üzmerch), practitioners of Buddhist and traditional medicine (otoch, ardiin emch), astrologists (zurhaich), energy healers (bio energich), shamans (böö, zairan, udgan), enlightened lamas (huvilgaan) and massage therapists (bariach) was driven by the fluid approach with which patients approach fulfilling the needs of their health and wellbeing. Such fluidity was also echoed in healing practice; as opposed to bounded by strict conceptual distinctions, healers re-purposed personally and culturally-familiar techniques, ranging from biomedical to those of Buddhist medicine (sowa rigpa) to occult practices. Many of the same techniques were practiced by a range of practitioners. The term orthopraxy, commonality of practice across conceptual difference, is used to address this phenomena. Such pairing together of different kinds of therapies – biomedical or otherwise – calls into question a “traditional” vs. modern or neo-spiritual framework within which such practices are often cast. I employ Robbin’s anthropology of discontinuity (2003), suggesting that Soviet influences represented “hard” cultural forms that provided a partial rupture in cultural knowledge between pre-revolutionary society and 1990. Nature (baigal) and natural surroundings (baigal orchin) were concepts often raised when discussing health and wellbeing. “Spiritual” earth and mountain masters (gazariin/uuliin ezed) of estranged homelands (nutag) that cause illness in families relocated to Ulaanbaatar; the water, flora, and mutton from one’s homeland as especially medicinally-suited to the body; shamans empowered to heal by appropriating into their practices the worship of nationally-significant mountains: territorialized national identity represented a prominent trend in healing practices. The revering of a nation through natural landmarks I call national nature, and suggest it be seen both with respect to romantic and utilitarian conceptions of a therapeutic nature that underpinned Soviet medicine, and Soviet indigenization campaigns and the ethnonationalism that was encouraged to flourish in borderland republics. Affective rooting to natural landmarks to maintain or restore wellbeing was also a way to enact Mongol-ness, rendering healing the body at once a practice of national subject-making.