Publications Archive – Page 2 of 3

Lost in transformation: comparative analysis of healthcare provision dynamics within urban systems of European Russia and France

Authors: Maria Gunko, Benoit Conti, Aleksander Sheludkov, Sophie Baudet-Michel, Anastasia Novkunskaya

This comparative study of healthcare in France and European Russia traces variations in provision between cities of different sizes and administrative statuses during a 20-year period. Since the early 1990s, both countries have been putting New Public Management principles into practice on an ad hoc and planned basis. As a result, healthcare reforms have led to fewer hospital beds and redistribution of healthcare provision in favour of larger cities.

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'.

Making sense of the war in Ukraine

Authors: Volodymyr Artiukh, Emma Rimpiläinen, Dace Dzenovska, Madeleine Reeves, Anna Balazs, Roosa Rytkönen, Jonathon Turnbull, Maria Gunko, Claudia Eggart, Ina Zharkevich

Location: Eastern Europe, Germany, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine

Themes: War

This forum is one attempt to make sense of the war and related events in a constantly shifting landscape. Each of us finds ourselves trying to track an avalanche-in-motion, figuring out what the war means for our interlocutors and their families, for their livelihoods and futures, for their practices of social navigation when homes and/or hopes have been upturned.

Post-Soviet coal mining cities as platforms for the reordering of power relations

Authors: Maria Gunko

Location: Russia

Themes: Capitalism, Infrastructure, Sociality

The decaying post-Soviet mining cities are vivid illustrations of the on-going realignment of power relations after the end of the Cold War. As such they are both manifestations of new capitalism forms and platforms for the emergence of collective survival strategies, as urban anthropologist Maria Gunko argues in her contribution to the BG’s “After Extractivism” text series.

US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes

Authors: Volodymyr Artiukh

Location: Russia, Ukraine

Themes: Geopolitics, War

...Having faced ‘the impossible to imagine,’ I see how the Western left is doing what it has been doing the best: analysing the American neo-imperialism, the expansion of NATO. It is not enough anymore as it does not explain the world that is emerging from the ruins of Donbas and Kharkiv’s main square....

Embattled futures on the margins of the liberal empire

Authors: Dace Dzenovska, Taras Fedirko

Location: Latvia, Ukraine

Themes: Geopolitics, The Future

A sense of embattlement has emerged as an increasingly common mode of experiencing the European present and thinking about its future. Is this a reinvigoration of politics or a dangerous amplification of political differences?

Emptiness forum in Cultural Anthropology

Authors: Dace Dzenovska, Daniel M. Knight

Location: Bosnia, China, Croatia, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Latvia, United Kingdom

Themes: Capitalism, Infrastructure, Materiality, The City, The Future

This series argues that emptiness is emerging as a concrete spatial-temporal coordinate in the global landscape of capitalism and state power, and a heuristic device of political struggles.

Emptiness and order

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia

Themes: Connectivity, Museums, Order

...The mess was sorted, but only insofar as it tidied up the in-between space between the old world that had ended, and the new world that could not yet be seen.

Muzeji un tukšums (in Latvian)

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia

Themes: Connectivity, Museums, Order

Muzeji ir instrumenti, ar kuru palīdzību sakārtot haosu, kas radies tukšošanās rezultātā. Tie ir arī tilti, ar kuru palīdzību mēģināt pievienoties globālajai apritei un tādējādi – nākotnei. Ja muzeja nav, tad, iespējams, nav arī kārtības, pasaule var paiet garām, un rītdiena labākajā gadījumā būs tāda pati kā šodiena.

Emptiness: Capitalism after socialism

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Eastern Europe

Themes: Capitalism, Postsocialism

The concept of 'emptiness' conjures up a rich archive of meanings – from chaos before order, to 'empty lands' settled by colonial modernizers, to the existential emptiness of modern subjects. It is a malleable and generative concept that connects things that are not the same, but may be of the same kind.

Emptiness: Capitalism without people in the Latvian countryside

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Eastern Europe, Latvia

Themes: Capitalism, Postsocialism, The Future

As a social formation, emptiness consists of: (1) an observable reality wherein places rapidly lose their constitutive elements (people, infrastructure, services, social networks, and the future); (2) a way of life that emerges in response to such changes, which seem irreversible; and (3) an emic interpretive framework for making sense of the new reality.

The Timespace of Emptiness

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia

Themes: Affect, Time

It refers to material reality, insofar as one can see homes without people and tracks without trains. It denotes the dispersal of social relations – without thick networks of friends and neighbors, lives become emptier.... Some people say that the abandoned homes make them feel anxious, even a little nauseous.

Emptiness

Showing 25 publications

Lost in transformation: comparative analysis of healthcare provision dynamics within urban systems of European Russia and France

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

Making sense of the war in Ukraine

Post-Soviet coal mining cities as platforms for the reordering of power relations

US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes

Embattled futures on the margins of the liberal empire

Emptiness forum in Cultural Anthropology

Emptiness and order

Muzeji un tukšums (in Latvian)

Emptiness: Capitalism after socialism

Emptiness: Capitalism without people in the Latvian countryside

The Timespace of Emptiness

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