Living capitalism and democracy after postsocialism

About

92-year old Milda lives in a village next to a former railway station in the Latvian-Russian borderlands. During the Soviet period, it was a vibrant transportation hub. Residents recall 'wagons of watermelons' that passed through and 'crowds of summer residents' that came from Leningrad. Things have changed since then. This European Research Council-funded project aims to find out what these changes mean for the people who are living them, and what they reveal about forms of capitalism and political authority in postsocialist spaces and beyond.

Field Reports

Field visit to Romania: buildings in waiting

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Types: Observations

Location: Romania

Themes: Infrastructure, Postsocialism, The City, The Future

News & Events

Emptiness in Romania

Publications

Reverberations of extractivism: The long epilogue of the coal story in East Germany

Authors: Friederike Pank

Location: Germany

Themes: Climate, Extractivism

Welzow, a provincial coal mining town in the Lusatian mining district of Eastern Germany, is an exemplary case of how the transition from extractivism to post-extractivism reaches the limit of anthropocentric technological solutionism, calling for a radically new approach, anthropologist Friederike Pank argues in her contribution to the Berliner Gazette text series “After Extractivism.”

Collaborate with us

If you would like to find out more about the project or contribute a blog on a resonant aspect of your own research to the Field Reports section of our website, please get in touch by writing to emptiness@anthro.ox.ac.uk.