Course Directors: Peter Niedermüller,
Humboldt University, Berlin
Violetta Zentai, Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, Hungary
Resource Persons: Svetlana Boym, Harvard
University , Cambridge MA
Michal Buchowski, Adam Miczkiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle
Don Kalb, Institute for Human Studies, Vienna
Julian Konstantinov, New Bulgarian University, Sofia
Martha Lampland, University of California, San Diego
Ina Merkel, Humboldt University, Berlin
Frances Pine, Cambridge University
Michael Stewart, University College, London
Miklós Vörös, University of Chicago
Svetlana Boym teaches literature at Harvard
University and she is the director of Graduate Studies for the academic
year 1999/2000. She is on the board of the New European University in St.
Petersburg. Her latest book is Common Places. Mythologies of Everyday Life
in Russia. (1994, Cambridge MA).
Michal Buchowski is a professor of Anthropology
at the University of Poznan and of the Comparative Central European Studies
at European University-Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). He teaches theory
of anthropology, systems of beliefs, and social and cultural issues of
contemporary Central European societies. He published several articles
in international journals and books, among others Reluctant Capitalists
(Berlin, 1997) and The Rational Other (Poznan, 1997).
Chris Hann was educated at Oxford (BA,
1974) and Cambridge (PhD, 1979), England. He taught social anthropology
at Cambridge, 1984-1992, and at Canterbury, 1992-1997. Present position:
Director, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle. Main interests:
Transformations of Rural Societies in Eastern Europe, Anatolia and Central
Asia; Property Issues; Ethnicity and Nationalism. Publications: The Skeleton
at the Feast, Contributions to East European Anthropology (Canterbury,
1995). Ed. Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (with E. Dunn) (London,
1996). Ed. Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition (Cambridge,
1998)
Don Kalb was educated in Nijmagen (the
Netherlands) and Amsterdam. He is associate professor of General Social
Sciences at Utrecht university, the Netherlands and currently acts as program
director for the Social Consequences of Economic Transformation in
East Central Europe. (SOCO) at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
His research interests include political and economic anthropology, social
history and historical sociology. His recent publications: Expanding Class:
Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities. The Netherlands
1850-1950. (London, 1997). Eds. The Ends of Globalization. Bringing Society
Back. (Boulder, 1999).
Yulian Konstantinov is reader at the Social
Anthropology Department of the New Bulgarian University in Sofia (Bulgaria)
and Director of the Institute for Anthropological Field Research at the
same university. He is known for his research in minority communities in
the former Soviet Bloc, particularly in reference to coping strategies
in the context of transition. Recent publications include Reindeer Herders
of the Kola Peninsula (1998) and articles in American Ethnologist and Anthropology
Today.
Martha Lampland specializes in the study
of political economy, cultural history, state formation, and science studies.
Her teaching has covered the following topics, among others: the social
history of Eastern European societies, feminist theory, studies of modernity,
sociology of knowledge, ethnography, and power and social revolt.
Recent publications: Altering States. Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern
Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Eds. D. Berdal and M. Bunzl (Ann Arbor,
forthcoming). The Object of Labor. Commodification of Agrarian Life in
Socialist Hungary. (Chicago, 1995).
Ina Merkel is associate professor of European
Ethnology at the Humboldt University, Berlin. She has conducted research
in former GDR and has published widely on consumption in socialism and
social history of GDR as well as gender and culture.
Peter Niedermüller is professor of
European Ethnology at the Humboldt University and co-editor of Ethnologia
Europaea, Journal of European Ethnology. He has published widely on nationalism,
post-socialist transformation and late modern urbanity.
Frances Pine is lecturer at the Department
of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University. She has completed research
on Polish social transformation, gender in post-socialist changes, and
rural adaptation strategies in CEE. Publications: with S. Bridger, eds.
Surviving Post Socialism: Local Strategies and Regional Responses in Eastern
Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Routledge, 1998).
Michael Stewart is lecturer at the Department
of Anthropology, University College, London. His research interest is in
ethnicity, nationalism, Roma culture and society in CEE. He is a
film maker and producer. Publications: The Time of the Gypsies. (Boulder,
1997). The Lilies of the Field: Marginal People Who Live for the Moment.
eds. with S. Day and E. Papataxiarchis (Boulder, 1999).
Miklós Vörös is lecturer
at the Department of Communications, Janus Pannonius University, Pécs.
He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Anthropology, University of
Chicago. He has been the author of a number of articles on the anthropology
of consumption, cultural studies, and the history of anthropology.
Violetta Zentai is visiting lecturer at
Janus Pannonius University of Pécs and ELTE University, Budapest.
Her research interest is in political anthropology, capitalist transformation,
gender and transition, and occidentalism in CEE. Publications: with Feischmidt,
M., Magyari-Vincze. E., eds. Men and Women in East European Transition. (Cluj. 1997). Ed. Politikai antropológia (Political Anthropology).
(Budapest, 1997).
Course objectives
Capitalism has undergone major restructuring
processes over the last two decades in the late modern societies. Distinctive
processes of flexible accumulation, transnational exchange of goods, consumption-driven
reproduction, division of labour based on information and high technology,
the growth of transnational financial markets are captured by the concepts
of post-fordist, postmodern, disorganised or global capitalism. The rise
of new structures of economy is intertwined with the reconfiguration of
identity patterns, social interactions and institutions, as well as assumptions,
judgements, ideals, and expectations pertinent to societies in the western
world. Parallel to these changes, societies in Central and Eastern Europe
as well as the former Soviet Union have disengaged themselves from state-socialist
path of modernisation and entered the road of capitalist transformation.
This transformation takes a variety of forms in which the profound concepts
of good society are elaborated and measured against western models and
practices.
Our inquiry proposes that the actual practices,
institutions and social debates in contemporary capitalism are informed
and shaped by different understandings of fairness in market transactions,
just distribution of resources, diverging concepts of social good, ties
and obligations, and thus shape culture in anthropological sense. As distinctive
social localities participate in contemporary capitalist production and
high capitalism itself embodies a plurality of ideas and experiences, it
is legitimate to talk about cultures of capitalism. Thus, our course will
investigate how contemporary cultures of capitalism are formed in the intricate
exchange of meanings and practices in historically conditioned localities
of the developed western world and post-socialist transformations in Europe
and Asia.
The course is built on the underlying assumption
that western societies of high capitalism and societies of post-socialist
transformation are linked by various historical conjunctions, transnational
and subnational movement of people, and crossing traditions of thought
and culture. Therefore, the transformation of post-socialist countries
should be investigated from various perspectives that are not constrained
narrowly to the region. Accordingly, experiences and concerns of late modernity
(also known as post-, second, post-welfare modernity), which cut across
different socio-political and national divisions within and outside Europe
and Asia, will also inform the course inquiry.
The composition of the resource team is to intensify
reflexive crosscurrents among different schools of thought within the discipline,
such as British social anthropology, American cultural anthropology, German
and various East European currents of European ethnology. The assigned
readings will ensure that the anthropological knowledge is enriched by
recent achievements in cultural studies, urban studies, sociology, and
political economy. Discussions will evaluate scholarly investigations and
experiences that resource persons as well as participants have developed
in their fields of research. Resource persons are prepared to be critically
challenged by theoretical perspectives and field expertise of participants
coming from transitional societies of the region, including the ones not
yet or not directly involved in the process of European unification.
Course content
The course content is comprised by three interrelated
topics:
1. Production: property, labour, capital
(Hann, Buchowski, Lampland, Konstantinov)
Lectures and seminars discuss cultural assumptions
and subsequent political discourses, legal provision, and organisational
innovations that shape and legitimise current forms of property rights.
Property is understood as an instrument of reproduction and profit making
but also as an expression of moral convictions and social justice. Discussions
will target the problem of property as power and obligation, dependence
and independence parallel. Property forms and rights are examined in the
innate tension of private decisions and public transparency. New structures
of property will be examined in the light of the changing status of different
forms of labour, and subsequent social distinctions. Ambiguous forms of
post-socialist ownership will be compared with current western concepts
and practices.
2. Consumption: images, sites, practices
(Voros, Zentai, Konstantinov, Pine, Merkel)
Lectures and seminars will investigate how consumer
society, both in its full-fledged or adolescent patterns, embodies a variety
of forms and sites of shopping practices and relies on the over-arching
presence of mass mediated marketing and advertisement. Post-socialist consuming
desires will be studied as liberation from a particular image of modernity
associated with the steaming factory or the rattling machine. The enchanted
world of mass consumption reinforces social inequalities and segregation
whereas political regimes legitimise themselves through promises for expanding
consumption. It will be examined how consumption becomes constitutive of
individual and collective identities and social communication: symbolic
uses of goods are used not only reinforcing but challenging social boundaries
as well.
3. Public spaces and realms (Stewart, Kalb,
Niedermuller, Boym)
Lectures and seminars will speculate on how cultures
of late capitalism reinvigorate conceptions of citizenship, entitlements,
individual and collective rights to use social spaces in post-welfare-state
and post-state-socialist contexts. Social actors shape their strategies
and networks through navigating as producers and consumers in the world
of transnational corporations, the arena of state bureaucracies, and the
market of mediatized culture that all embody global and local practices.
Protected spaces and practices of the privileged are resisted and challenged
by various social groups constructed as politically, economically, or culturally
marginal in late capitalism. The significance of the everyday experiences
and knowledge in furnishing and occupying public realms in late modernity
will be comparatively discussed.
Teaching methods
The course is designed to offer advanced, in-depth
analysis of topics listed in the syllabus. Resource persons will discuss
different concepts of and approaches to problems described in lecture abstracts.
Seminars will examine and connect major themes articulated by lectures
and highlight conflicting interpretations suggested by particular
social and scholarly experiences of participants. Intensive and interactive
seminar work will be prepared by preliminary assignments to participants:
they are to critically review assigned literature and to participate in
the discussion of issues that seminar leaders propose well in advance to
the course. Based on preliminary inquiry, seminar discussion will incorporate
the presentations of participants' own research results as well.
Course level, target audience
Faculty and Ph.D. candidates are encouraged to
apply who are engaged in teaching cultural and social anthropology, ethnology,
cultural studies and theory, contemporary social history, and sociology
in their home institutions.
Central European University does
not discriminate on the basis of--including, but not limited to race, colour,
national and ethnic origin, religion, gender or sexual orientation in administering
its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs,
and athletic and other school-administered programs.
