Yulia Gradskova - Gendering Postsocialism: Old Legacies and New Hierarchies

Gendering Postsocialism explores changes in gendered norms and expectations in Eastern Europe and Eurasia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The dismantlement of state socialism in these regions triggered monumental shifts in their economic landscape, the involvement of their welfare states in social citizenship and, crucially, their established gender norms and relations, all contributing to the formation of the postsocialist citizen.

Case studies examine a wide range of issues across 15 countries of the post-Soviet era. These include gender aspects of the developments in education in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Hungary, controversies around abortion legislation in Poland, migrant women and housing as a gendered problem in Russia, challenges facing womens NGOs in Bosnia, and identity formation of unemployed men in Lithuania. This close analysis reveals how different variations of neoliberal ideology, centred around the notion of the self-reliant and self-determining individual, have strongly influenced postsocialist gender identities, whilst simultaneously showing significant trends for a retraditionalising of gender norms and expectations.

This volume suggests that despite integration with global political and free market systems, the postsocialist gendered subject combines strategies from the past with those from contemporary ideologies to navigate new multifaceted injustices around gender in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Yulia Gradskova, Sdertrn University, Sweden, is a historian dealing with post-Soviet history. She is the co-author of Gender Equality on a Grand Tour (2017 with E. Blomberg, Y. Waldemarson, A. Zvinkliene) and the co-editor of And They Lived Happily Ever After (2012 with H. Carlbck and Zh. Kravchenko).

Ildik Asztalos Morell, sociologist from Mlardalen and Uppsala University (Sweden) with an interest in rural, gender and ethnicity studies of transition societies. She is the author of Emancipations Dead-End Roads (1999) and co-editor of Gender Regimes, Citizen Participation and Rural Restructuring (2008 with B. Bock).

Gendering Postsocialism

Old Legacies and New Hierarchies

Edited by Yulia Gradskova and Ildik Asztalos Morell

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 selection and editorial matter, Yulia Gradskova and Ildik Asztalos Morell; individual chapters, the contributors

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Gradskova, Yulia, editor. | Asztalos Morell, Ildiko, editor.

Title: Gendering Postsocialism : old legacies and new hierarchies / edited by Yulia Gradskova and Ildiko Asztalos Morell.

Description: 1 Edition. | London ; New York : Routledge, [2018] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017050363 | ISBN 9781138296060 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315100258 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Gender identity--Former communist countries. | Women--Former communist countries--Social conditions. | Sexual minorities--Former communist countries--Social conditions.

Classification: LCC HQ18.E852 G4596 2018 | DDC 305.309171/7--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050363

ISBN: 978-1-138-29606-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-10025-8 (ebk)

Roman Abramov is an Associate Professor; Candidate of Sciences in Theory, History and Methods of Sociology; and Deputy Head of the Analysis of Social Institutions Department, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). He is also a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Science. Abramovs main publications in English include Understanding Professionalism in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: an Analytical Review, in The American Sociologist (2016); The History of Sociological Research on Occupations and Professions in the USSR 196080s: Ideological Frameworks and Analytical Resources, in SSRN. Series Social Science Research Network (2014); and Managerialism and the Academic Profession, in Russian Education and Society (2012). His research interests include the sociology of professions, memory studies, sociological theory, and the sociology of higher education.

Ildik Asztalos Morell is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Mlardalen University and senior research fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University. Her major interests include comparative gender research, the study of transition societies with a special focus on rural transformation during state socialism and in the emergence of capitalism, intersectional aspects of rural marginalisation and poverty, and Romani studies. Morell has published close to forty articles and book chapters and has been the co-editor of several volumes, most importantly Gender Regimes, Citizen Participation and Rural Restructuring (2008 with Bettina Bock), Gender Transitions in Russia and Eastern Europe (2005 with Helene Carlbck, Sara Rastbck, and Madeleine Hurd) and Attitudes, Poverty and Agency in Russia and Ukraine (2016 with Ann-Mari Stre).

Sanela Bajramovi Jusufbegovi is a PhD candidate in History at rebro University, Sweden, where she has taught since 2009. Her contribution in this anthology is based on her forthcoming thesis Hierarchical Sisterhood, which is focused on efforts by the Swedish foundation Kvinna till Kvinna to support womens peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1993 and 2013. This research explores the advantages and dilemmas of transnational encounters between women in the context of development work done within the framework of international interventions. She has contributed chapters to publications in English and Swedish languages. Her research interests range from donor/recipient relations, wartime sexual violence, and womens activism in postwar Bosnia to methodological and ethical questions in the field of oral history.

Li Bennich-Bjrkman is the Johan Skytte Professor in Eloquence and Political Science at University of Uppsala, Sweden, and she was research director for six years at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. She has worked extensively on issues of political developments in the post-communist and post-Soviet countries, on life in exile and refugees, on creativity and research politics, and on integration. Presently, she is investigating conflict, gender, and masculinity in the South Caucasus. Her recent publications include Post-Communism, in SAGE