Informal economy, informal state : the case of Uzbekistan

Peer reviewedPreprin

Language and identity in post-1991 Ukraine: was it really nation-building?

After the collapse of three socialist federations in Eastern Europe, the expression ‘nation-building’ returned to the heart of academic debates. Like other former socialist republics, Ukraine has started its nation- building project trying to balance between a limitation of centrifugal forces and the ‘nationalisation’ (Brubaker 1994) of the state. This article examines the main features of language policies within the Ukrainian nation-building project and adopts a dual approach. It first surveys the political will that has been incarnated in language policies since 1991, and how national identity has been affected by those policies. However, it counterpoises this approach with an analysis of bottom actors and their attitude towards language policies. The framework constructed is intended to question the idea that nation-building is mainly an elite driven process and to suggest that common people can participate in a political project by renegotiating its features at the local level

Between ‘Wizards of Oz’, Madagascari Lemur and Megalomaniac Presidents: The Amusements of Research in Post-Socialist Spaces

When mentioning that my work involves dealing with several former USSR countries I often get questions on the kind of dangers my research entails. Whilst I do not see particular dangers in what I do, I have to admit that I had asked myself the same questions before my first fieldwork. I stopped worrying only after working out some automatisms, attitudes and gaining an understanding of certain realities that permit me, to a decent extent, to ‘stay safe’. This blog entry shares some experience-based reflections can be useful to minimise risks but it is also intended to discuss why dangers in some ‘exotic’ states are much less than one could think, writes Abel Poles

Estonian Identity Construction Between Nation Branding and Building

Peer reviewe

Language and Identity in Ukraine: Was it Really Nation-Building?

"After the collapse of three socialist federations in Eastern Europe, the expression ‘nation-building’ returned to the heart of academic debates. Like other former socialist republics, Ukraine has started its nationbuilding project trying to balance between a limitation of centrifugal forces and the ‘nationalisation’ (Brubaker 1994) of the state. This article examines the main features of language policies within the Ukrainian nation-building project and adopts a dual approach. It fi rst surveys the political will that has been incarnated in language policies since 1991, and how national identity has been aff ected by those policies. However, it counterpoises this approach with an analysis of bottom actors and their attitude towards language policies. The framework constructed is intended to question the idea that nation-building is mainly an elite driven process and to suggest that common people can participate in a political project by renegotiating its features at the local level." (author's abstract

Building a Ukrainian Identity in Odessa: Negotiation of Markers and Informal Nationalism

A large and established body of literature on nation building in post-socialist spaces has initially put emphasis on state-centred construction of identity references and markers such as language, education or institutions and governance. In contrast, a recent stream of scholarship has attempted to bring agency into identity debates to propose new tools and approaches that can be used in the study of identity construction. This article is a further exploration of the latter position. It looks at the way identities are constructed, and renegotiated, at the everyday level, by ordinary people, by illustrating the competition between Russian and Ukrainian languages in Odessa, a Ukrainian city on the Black sea, to look at the synergy generated by the competition between local and national narratives

Can free elections secure democratic consolidation? An analysis of Ukraine in 2006

'Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags stehen die Ergebnisse der ukrainischen Parlamentswahlen von 2006. Sie spiegeln in mancherlei Hinsicht den Stand der demokratischen Entwicklung wider. Dieser Prozess kann jedoch nicht als ausschließliches Ergebnis der Präsidentschaft Juschtschenkos angesehen werden. Er ist vielmehr das Resultat von Entwicklungen, die mit der Erlangung der Unabhängigkeit der Ukraine einsetzten. Dies wird anhand des institutionellen, politischen und sozialen Wandels aufgezeigt.' (Autorenreferat

Informality and survival in Ukraine's nuclear landscape : living with the risks of Chernobyl

Recent debates on informal economic activities have partially switched away from a pure monetary logic towards a more complex one, embedded in long term relations and reckoning with non materialistic paradigms. The role of informality in certain aspects of people's lives has however, remained largely unexplored. This article uncovers what happens when the state retires from (providing benefits and social services to) a geographic area and what kind of mechanisms, practices and institutions are created to make up for this. We suggest that, in the face of de facto abandonment by state welfare, and the absence of a private sector alternative, a myriad of transactions and actors can make up for this by replacing these forms of welfare informally. Our case study focuses on the nuclear landscapes around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in north–central Ukraine as we reveal the ways the excluded and abandoned, which we frame as post-nuclear “bare life” (Agamben, 1998), have created a mechanism of social security that is independent from the state and yet complements it. Informal, local and unofficial understandings of nuclear spaces are central to survival in this marginalised and risky environment

American boots and Russian vodka: external factors in the colour revolutions of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan

'Der Beitrag untersucht die Rolle von externem Druck in der Welle der sogenannten 'farbigen Revolutionen'. Durch die Analyse dreier konkreter Fallbeispiele - der Rosenrevolution in Georgien (2003), der orangenen Revolution in der Ukraine (2004) und der Tulpenrevolution in Kirgisistan (2005) - versuchen wir die Wirkungsbedingungen, aber auch die Beschränkungen, aufzuzeigen, denen externe Akteure, vor allem die USA und Russland, innerhalb der Bewegungen unterlagen, die die Massen mobilisierten - was schließlich zum Sturz der nichtdemokratischen Regime führte.' (Autorenreferat