Tavoite ja sisältö / Aim and content |
The course examines some of the most salient political and social issues in the post-Soviet region through combining of insights from anthropology, history, and politics into questions of property, money, and distribution. Property opens up fruitful perspectives on the distribution and use of power in society, questions of state and sovereignty, the separation of the economic from the political and civic spheres of activity, and everyday lives under state socialism and after.
The course will use Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as case studies and illustrations throughout, with the possibility to also examine other post-Soviet countries depending on students’ background and interest. After providing students with the tools to think about property in an analytical manner, the course explores questions such as: Was there private property under state socialism? How were property relations and networks of distribution transformed (or not) with the collapse of state socialism? How are property relations reflected in the organisation of political life in post-Soviet countries currently? How can we understand corruption, inequality, and organised crime in these societies by analysing property relations? How did the oligarchic system develop in Ukraine? What drives socioeconomic inequality in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus? The course is suitable for master’s degree students interested in the political economy of post-Soviet countries and questions of property more generally.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course, students will understand societal transformations in post-Soviet countries from the perspective of property and outcomes for different segments of society, including elites, oligarchs, and the wider public. They will know basic concepts of analysis in economic anthropology. They will also be able to evaluate the causes and consequences of variation between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus with regards to the role of the state in mediating between property and politics. The students will develop advanced level of assessment of analytical concepts and learn to utilise analytical tools to evaluate evidence for research tasks. They will also be familiar with the different research methods and approaches used to analyse property relations in anthropology, political history, area studies, and politics.
Instructions for participation: The students will be graded for class participation and written work. Participation consists of regular attendance and active and thoughtful contributions in class. Students will sign up for two weeks where they are responsible for circulating discussion questions in advance of class. Everyone will be expected to have read all the required texts for the week (selected from the syllabus). Each student will also submit a weekly learning diary discussing issues they have learned in class and write one essay on a topic of their choice. The course will be realised in a hybrid format with some of the classes in person and some online.
Schedule Class 1: Introduction & key concepts in economic anthropology: property, money, gift exchange, types of value (Emma Rimpiläinen)
Readings:
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville.
Gregory, Cristopher A. 2015. Gifts and Commodities (2nd ed.) Chicago: Hau Books.
Hann, Chris, and Keith Hart. 2011. Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique. Cambridge: Polity.
Mauss, Marcel. 2015. Essay on the Gift: The Form and Sense of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Chicago: Hau Books.
Class 2: Property in the Soviet Union: a “complex form of gift economy”? (Emma Rimpiläinen)
Readings:
Cherkaev, Xenia. 2018. “Self-Made Boats and Social Self-Management: The Late-Soviet Ethics of Mutual Aid.” Cahiers Du Monde Russe 59(2):289–310.
Verdery, Katherine. 2003. The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania. Ithaca: Cornell.
Verdery, Katherine, and Caroline Humphrey, eds. 2004. Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy. Oxford: Berg.
Ledeneva, A. V. (1998). Russia’s economy of favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Class 3: Transformation of networks and institutions in the immediate post-Soviet years (Kristiina Silvan)
Readings:
Verdery, Katherine. 1996. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Part III, chapters 6-8)
Wanner, Catherine. 2005. ‘Money, Morality and New Forms of Exchange in Postsocialist Ukraine’. Ethnos 70(4):515–37.
Sakwa, Richard. 2021. Russian Politics and Society. London: Routledge (fifth edition).
Especially Chapter 6 ‘Crime, corruption and security’.
Class 4: Everyday modes of subsistence in 1990s Ukraine, Belarus and Russia OR Organised crime and the intertwining of force, power, and wealth (Emma Rimpiläinen)
Burawoy, M., P. Krotov, and T. Lytkina. 2000. ‘Involution and Destitution in Capitalist Russia’. Ethnography 1(1):43–65.
Humphrey, Caroline. 2002. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economics After Socialism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Morris, Jeremy. 2016. Everyday Post-Socialism: Working-Class Communities in the Russian Margins. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Volkov, Vadim. 2002. Violent Entrepreneurs, The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Class 5: Housing as a property object: privatisation, mortgage finance, and subjectivity (Marina Khmelnitskaya)
Readings:
Khmelnitskaya, Marina. 2014. Russian housing finance policy: state-led institutional evolution. Post-Communist Economies, 26/2, pp: 149-175. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14631377.2014.904104
Khmelnitskaya, Marina. 2015. The Policy-making process and social learning in Russia: the case of housing policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zavisca, Jane. 2008. “Property without Markets: Housing Policy and Politics in Post-Soviet Russia, 1992–2007.” Comparative European Politics 6(3):365–86.
Class 6: Development of the oligarchic system and patronage networks, socioeconomic inequality (Marina Khmelnitskaya)
Readings:
Bojcun, Marko. 2020. Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine: Selected Essays 1990-2015. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag.
Kolesnikov, Andrei, and D. Volkov. 2019. Pragmatic Paternalism: The Russian Public and the Private Sector. Carnegie Moscow, 18.1.2019.
Mihályi, Péter, and Iván Szelényi. 2019. Rent-Seekers, Profits, Wages and Inequality: The Top 20%. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG.
Sakwa, Richard. 2021. Russian Politics and Society. London: Routledge (fifth edition).
Especially Chapter 6 ‘Crime, corruption and security’, Chapter 14 ‘Russian Capitalism’ and Chapter 15 ‘Society and social movements’.
Class 7: Corruption on the macro and micro levels: from state capture to an economy of favours; popular reactions to corruption + final reflections (Emma Rimpiläinen)
Readings:
Ledeneva, A. V. (1998). Russia’s economy of favours: Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ledeneva, Alena, 2013. Can Russia modernise? Sistema, power networks and informal governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Polese, Abel. 2008. ‘“If I Receive It, It Is a Gift; If I Demand It, Then It Is a Bribe”: On the Local Meaning of Economic Transactions in Post-Soviet Ukraine’. Anthropology in Action 15(3).
Sakwa, Richard. 2021. Russian Politics and Society. London: Routledge (fifth edition).
Especially Chapter 1 ‘Approaches to Russian politics’, as well as Chapters 6, 14 and 15 - on informality, cronyism, capitalism, economic transformation from the viewpoint of the elite and the public.
Other readings (list to be updated)
Musaraj, Smoki. 2020. Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
World Bank. 2018. Crony Capitalism in Ukraine: Impact on Economic Outcomes. Washington D.C.: World Bank Group.
Yurchenko, Yuliya. 2018. Ukraine and the Empire of Capital: From Marketisation to Armed Conflict. London: PlutoPress.
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