Politics in Eastern Europe has become increasingly defined by apparent paradoxes, such as majority voting for the ex-communist parties in the early 1990s and strong support for populists and the radical right later in the 1990s and 2000s. The tendency in political science studies is to speak about the losers of transition, and to explain success of the ex-communist, radical and populist parties and politicians in terms of the politics of resentment or protest voting. However, what subjectivities have been produced during post-socialism and why/how they are articulated in particular dialogues among politicians and people, are questions that have not been discussed in most studies. In this dissertation I explore political subjectivities to explain voting behavior in the period of 2003-2004 in Lithuania. I analyze nostalgia for socialism and individuals relations to social and political history, community, nation, and the state. I argue that voting is an enactment of a social text or a performance of social history, in which a subject embodies his/her experience and knowledge. Voting is a meaningful action not just a protest. Electoral politics is a semantic and symbolic competition.
My analysis is informed by phenomenology, semiotics, interpretative anthropology, post-structuralist theory as well as post-socialist and post-colonial studies. The research was conducted in 2003-2004 in three village communities and the cities of Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04162006-225250 |
| Date | 02 June 2006 |
| Creators | Klumbyte, Neringa |
| Contributors | Robert Hayden, Nicole Constable, Ilya Prizel, Alberta Sbragia, Andrew Strathern |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04162006-225250/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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