Anthropology of East Europe Review

BOOK REVIEW

THE RED RIVIERA Kristen Ghodsee (2005) Durham and London: Duke University Press Oriol Pi-Sunyer University of Massachusetts, Amherst

While reviewing The Red Riviera I considerable cultural capital. Acquisition took a learned that Bulgaria was slated to join the EU in variety of forms, but the most valuable elements about a year and this made me wonder what proved to be work experience, control of foreign repercussions might be in store for Ghodsee’s languages, and degrees from prestigious Black Sea resorts. What will happen as money universities. Many of Ghodsee’s informants and tourists flow eastward? Tropes of ageless accumulated these non-material assets under tranquility to the contrary, change has always socialism and later managed to use them to their formed part of the tourism picture, and it is hard advantage when tourism emerged as one of the to imagine a global business with comparable country’s most dynamic economic sectors. sensitivity to upheavals, natural or man-made. Chapter 3 examines tourism policy under What is unusual is to find a full-length tourism socialism and links it to Marxist-Leninist monograph devoted to change and to the social doctrine, particularly the definition of leisure as price this has exacted. part of the productive process. A concrete result Kristen Ghodsee’s study is many things, was general and substantial experience with but above all it is a detailed account of the vacations: before 1989, about half of Bulgaria’s Bulgarian tourist sector during the era of state hotel capacity was reserved for domestic tourists. socialism and the country’s far-from-painless In Chapter 4, ominously titled “To the Wolves: insertion into global capitalism. What gives the Tourism and Economic Transformation,” the book ethnographic depth is the way that the focus shifts to a consideration of the price and social and personal costs of this shift are pain of postsocialist restructuring and explained through the voices and stories of privatization, a process that lent itself to the Ghodsee’s informants. In the same manner, we emergence of Mafias and shady “domestic come to understand how those at the receiving investors.” Chapter 5, “Feminism-by-Design” is end of these tectonic changes learned to less about tourism than about the role and place modulate their behavior and, in some cases, their of feminism and foreign NGOs in present-day attitude. As she writes in a first chapter aptly Bulgaria. These latter could be likened to titled “Shattered Windows, Broken Lives,” no colonial outposts, “distributorships for Western one predicted the events of 1989. “After almost ideas about gender.” The argument goes much half a century of Cold War that had brought the deeper, an appeal to allow Bulgarian women to world to the brink of total nuclear annihilation, define their own priorities, and chart their own the enemy just disappeared.” But, of course, the ways. people remained, and this is part of their story. In brief, this is the composition of the We learn a great deal about mechanisms of book. Two master themes articulate it: the survival, particularly about the mobilization of changes in Bulgarian society following the networks and the deployment of cultural capital. dismantling of socialism, and the role of women The closer Ghodsee comes to her informants, the in the managerial and service structures of clearer it becomes that this journey also tourism before and after this change. By the chronicles the ethnographer’s effort to measures in use at the time, the tourist industry comprehend, cerebrally and psychologically, the worked quite well under socialism. It generated impact of a massive collapse. significant amounts of hard currency from The book consists of an Introduction Westerners during the peak season, and at other and five chapters. In Chapters 1 and 2 the author times met the vacation needs of Bulgarians and discusses the specific historical circumstances “fraternal visitors” from other socialist societies. surrounding the development of tourism, and The whole system, political and economic, of how this permitted some women to acquire very

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which the tourism sector formed a part, was Here is where gender enters the argument predicated on a straightforward formula: in fascinating ways. Cultural capital was allocated to socialist subjects along The communist state owned everything specific gendered lines. Women like Desi and no one had access to private the waitress were concentrated in the economic capital. The opposite was true universities, where they got a more of cultural capital. The communist state general education, whereas men like had, as one of its core ideological goals Desi’s husband were concentrated in the the “uplifting” of the workers and more technical colleges, where they peasants, and the imparting of cultural learned skills specific to the communist capital evenly among the population. (p. command economy. (p. 107). 104) The husband in question is now out of work As part of its conceptual bargain the state because there is no demand for his engineering provided access to education, credentials, and skills. Unemployment is not the only problem: other skills. As Ghodsee notes, as early as 1977, the whole moral order has changed drastically: 22 percent of those between the ages of twenty and twenty-four were enrolled in institutions of Every speeding ticket or other traffic higher learning—a percentage greater than that violation can be avoided with a ‘special found in the UK, Switzerland, or Austria. fee’ paid in cash directly to the officer. An These figures are relevant for envelope of banknotes will guarantee understanding future developments. It has been every application for a government argued that state socialism inevitably led to the license or permit. (p. 125). infantilization of both men and women, but Tourism is a relatively bright spot because the skills, education, and even substantial exposure Black Sea beaches continue to attract visitors; it to “bourgeois” or “high” culture, would seem to was also one of the first sectors to experience argue that this was not the whole story. It is privatization, with mixed results. certainly correct that the state was The Red Riviera is not a depressing “paternalistic,” and no less true that many of the book, even if it has been necessary to count the prestige jobs in socialist Bulgaria went to men. costs of a transition that many observers now Tourism, however, was both a prestigious believe was inevitable. It is basically an profession and one staffed virtually top to ethnography for our times, times when systems bottom by women. Only as a result of such are put to the test and many people live in the educational opportunities would the author have midst of uncertainty. This does not only happen encountered a “remarkably qualified... waitress” in former socialist states. with “the equivalent of a master’s degree in English philology” and knowledge of four languages besides her own. Ghodsee very rightly insists that one should not globalize experience, male or female, but that gender certainly matters. While the vast majority of the population, male and female, was initially negatively impacted by privatization, some suffered more than others. In Ghodsee’s words,

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