The Ethnographic Negative of Cars in Their Direction
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Th e ethnographic negative Capturing the impress of boredom and inactivity Bruce O’Neill Abstract: Outside the main railway station in Bucharest, Romania, otherwise un- employed day laborers hustle for small change as informal parking lot attendants (parcagii). While their eff orts yield numerous ethnographic observations of en- trepreneurial activity, these attendants report “doing nothing” day in and day out. Th is article explores the tension between etic observations and emic feelings in or- der to ask a methodological question: how can “not doing” and “absent activity” be captured within an ethnographic method primed to observe activity constantly? In response, this article takes inspiration from photography to develop “the negative” as a technique for bringing the impress of absent activity on social worlds into ethnographic view. Th e intent of this methodological intervention is to open new theoretical lines of fl ight into the politics of inactivity. Keywords: boredom, parking lots, photo-ethnography, postsocialism, unemploy- ment, urban space “What boredom,” Dani sighed. “And every day Now in their mid-twenties, Dani and Razvan is like this.” His friend Razvan nodded slowly spent their mornings looking for day labor off in agreement, drawing deeply on his cigarette. the books. In the aft ermath of the 2008 global fi - “Th ere’s no work. Th ere’s no money. Th ere’s nancial crisis, however, there was little demand nothing to do but sit here.” We sat atop a shallow for it. On the majority of days when they could fl ight of stairs overlooking the parking lot of the not land a gig on a construction site in the capi- Gara de Nord railway station in Bucharest, Ro- tal city, or clearing a fi eld just outside of it, they mania. Dani, Razvan, and Razvan’s partner, Io- joined Ioana in the parking lot, where the crew ana, met at “the Gara” a decade earlier as young hustled pocket change as informal parking lot teenagers. Th ey had fl ed deepening poverty attendants (parcagii). Considered a nuisance, the and immiseration in the countryside as Roma- city police criminalized their entrepreneurial ef- nia made its painful transition from socialism forts as begging. “You don’t make much money toward the global economy. Without formal here,” Ioana explained, “but you get by. And it’s qualifi cations (muncitor necalifi cat), however, safer than prostitution or picking pockets.” Raz- the crew did not get very far from the station. van nodded in agreement. He had, aft er all, been Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 78 (2017): 23–37 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2017.780103 24 | Bruce O’Neill Figure . Doing nothing (© Bruce O’Neill). in and out of jail for petty theft . “You just have to of work and on the streets. Pressed to the mar- keep waiting,” Ioana carried on, “for the police gins of the city, newly homeless Romanians like to leave, for a space to open up, for drivers will- Dani, Razvan, and Ioana stood around emp- ing to pay you …” When Ioana fi nished ticking ty-handed. Time appeared to slow, and the road off the various pieces that must fall into place before them extend endlessly into the distance before the slow accumulation of money could as the crew insisted there was no work to be commence, Dani added with a chortle, “Th ere’s found, no wage to spend, nowhere else for them nothing left for us to do in this country. Th ere’s to go, and ultimately, nothing to do. just boredom.” Th e crew continued to wait.1 Th is claim to be “doing nothing” cuts against Two decades aft er the fall of communism, an ethnographic sensibility. As the craft of par- and in the aft ermath of the 2008 global fi nan- ticipant observation has shown time and again, cial crisis, downwardly mobile Romanians are people cannot help but be engaged in doing bored. Th e introduction of market pressures something. Sitting, pacing, or staring at a park- intended to propel this once isolated commu- ing lot are, aft er all, forms of activity. To be nist country into a heightened state of market- truly inactive makes no ethnographic sense. driven production and consumption had, for Such mundane activities may very well evoke many, the opposite eff ect. Communist-era guar- boredom, but as Bronisław Malinowski attests antees to work, housing, and a minimum of ([1922] 2003: 4), boring moments nevertheless food rations gave way amid eff orts at neoliberal contain a wide array of documentable people, reform to intensifi ed competition. Th ose unable practices, and relationships. Ethnographers have, to compete successfully found themselves out furthermore, shown the various ways in which Th e ethnographic negative | 25 even idle moments add up and contribute to in Bucharest (O’Neill 2017), but also in similarly larger processes. Rather than being inert, those precarious societies grappling with the growing claiming to be “doing nothing” are in fact ac- problem of what has been described as “wage- tively doing something, such as generating social less life” (Denning 2010), from Africa (Ferguson networks (Ralph 2008), undertaking entrepre- 2015; Mains 2013) to Asia (Allison 2013; Jeff rey neurial schemes (Simone 2004), or participating 2010; Li 2014) and to the Americas (Millar 2014; in political projects (Schielke 2008). Th e ethno- Stewart 1996). People oft en fi nd themselves do- graphic imperative to understand social worlds ing nothing and for reasons well beyond their through the lens of activity lays bare social rela- control. Again, this article asks: how can inactiv- tionships engaged and ever productive, even if ity be brought into ethnographic view? that productivity is not readily apparent on the ground. From such a perspective, boredom and inactivity become thinkable as a form of social Stalled out production (Dunn 2014). While such etic lines of analysis bend toward optimism by reframing A sense of troublingly absent activity has framed (maybe even rescuing) those claiming to be “do- the rhythm of everyday life in Bucharest since ing nothing” as actually active and even creative, the waning years of Romanian communism. the ethnographic move to foreground produc- Brutal communist austerity left ordinary Roma- tive agency has a way of obscuring deeply felt nians with a diffi cult-to-shake feeling of having emic concerns about a growing set of practices “nothing to do” (stau degeaba). Th is emergent that are not, or are no longer, happening, par- politics of inactivity crystalized in the early ticularly among the economically vulnerable. 1980s, when then communist dictator Nicolae How, this article asks, can the impress of “not Ceaușescu undertook an aggressive plan to pay doing” and of “absent activity” on social rela- off Romania’s $11 billion foreign debt within a tionships and on inner worlds be brought into decade (Petrescu 2002). Ceaușescu believed this ethnographic view? aggressive fi scal policy was necessary to limit Th is article, in response, experiments with a foreign interference in the development of so- methodological technique for documenting inac- cialism in Romania. To drum up the necessary tivity in an eff ort to open up new theoretical lines cash reserve, central planners heightened the of fl ight. Rather than taking inactivity as a mode exportation of food and durable goods while of unrecognized social production, as the eth- severely limiting imports. Th ese planning and nographic record is so primed to do, this article policy decisions led to the development of what instead takes seriously the parking lot attendant’s liberal economists call a “shortage economy,” claim to be doing nothing. My analysis proposes which left ordinary Romanians with little to do to record an impression of inactivity—under- but idle around work, the store, and at home stood here as the troubling absences of activity— (Kornai 1986). Workers, for example, reported on individual and collective worldviews through to factories where production stalled because the production of what I call “an ethnographic of a systematic lack of the necessary raw ma- negative.” Drawing inspiration from photogra- terials (Verdery 1996). Stalled output resulted phy, this article takes the negative in its ethno- in a scarcity of everyday consumables. As store graphic form to be a kind of inverted record. Th e shelves ran bare, Romanians spent hours each ethnographic negative, as it is developed below, day waiting in breadlines in order to carry out captures observable actors and activities so that their household provisioning (Kligman 1998). they might serve as the dark backdrop against Once home, shortages of electricity and light which the aff ect of inactivity may be brought to bulbs further impinged on daily practices, leav- light. It is a methodological intervention suited ing people to spend their nights sitting in the for studying capitalism’s undoing of everyday life dark (Chelcea 2002).2 26 | Bruce O’Neill Shortages not only foreclosed activities at Ghinea and Mungiu-Pippidi 2010). Th e explo- work, home, and the store, but also troubled sive growth of newspaper and television helped movement between these spaces. Insuffi cient to introduce new objects and lifestyles around automobile production rendered private car which postcommunist peoples could imagine ownership rare in communist Romania (Găte- their future (Berdahl 2005; Patico and Caldwell jel 2013). To move about the city, Romanians 2002). While Romania’s transition toward the at that time relied almost exclusively on public global marketplace was both brutal and slow,3 transportation. Energy conservation policies, pending accession into the European Union in however, caused Bucharest’s extensive constel- 2007 opened up a rising quality of life. Between lation of trams, trolley buses, and the Metro 2000 and 2007, for example, Romania’s econ- to run irregularly (Banister 1981: 261).