Esperanto, Civility, and the Politics of Fellowship: A
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ESPERANTO, CIVILITY, AND THE POLITICS OF FELLOWSHIP: A COSMOPOLITAN MOVEMENT FROM THE EASTERN EUROPEAN PERIPHERY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Ana Velitchkova Omar Lizardo, Director Graduate Program in Peace Studies and Sociology Notre Dame, Indiana July 2014 © Copyright by ANA MILENOVA VELITCHKOVA 2014 All rights reserved ESPERANTO, CIVILITY, AND THE POLITICS OF FELLOWSHIP: A COSMOPOLITAN MOVEMENT FROM THE EASTERN EUROPEAN PERIPHERY Abstract by Ana Velitchkova This dissertation examines global, regional, state-, group-, and person-level processes involved in the growth of the movement formed around the constructed international language Esperanto. The Esperanto movement emerged in the global arena in the late nineteenth century as a response to inequalities in the nation-state field. In the course of several decades, the movement established a new global field based on the logic of equal communication through Esperanto and on the accumulation of cultural capital. While the field gained autonomy from the nation-state field, it has not been recognized as its equal. Persons endowed with cultural capital but lacking political and economic capital have been particularly drawn to Esperanto. Ironically, while attempting to overcome established unfair distinctions based on differential accumulation of political and economic capital, the Esperanto movement creates and maintains new distinctions and inequalities based on cultural capital accumulation. Ana Velitchkova At the regional level, the Esperanto movement became prominent in state- socialist Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. The movement found unexpected allies among independent states in the Eastern European periphery. The growth of the Esperanto movement as the modal movement in the region coincides with the institutionalization of a unique form of civility favoring comprehensive socio-cultural development and the fellowship principle. According to Eastern European civility, the familiar distinctions between the international and the domestic arenas, between the cultural and the political domains, and between the public and the private spheres taken for granted in the West become blurred. The organizational forms the Esperanto movement developed, its practices, and its grounding in three universalist discursive fields−world culture, Marxism, and fellowship−served as institutional carriers of Eastern European civility. The institutionalization of the hybrid Eastern European civility can explain the puzzling case of the Bulgarian transition to democracy. While the country lacked a Western-type civil society and a history of anti-communist contention, it still managed to establish a peaceful and stable democracy. These findings are based on historical and comparative process tracing involving five independent data sources: original archival research, interviews, and participant observation, and available survey and organizational data. To my grandparents' generation, who believed in communism To my parents' generation, who believed in the transition to democracy but quickly found out it wasn't what they had expected it to be To my generation, who are struggling with the question: "Now what?" I hope this work helps us build a future on a firmer ground... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of figures ..................................................................................................................... vi List of tables ...................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................ viii Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Methods ..............................................................................................................9 2.1 The beginning of the project ..............................................................................9 2.2 Multiple units of analysis .................................................................................10 2.3 Theoretical strategy ..........................................................................................11 2.4 Global field positionality as a foundation of a historical and comparative cosmopolitanism ........................................................................................12 2.5 Research designs for the substantive chapters .................................................15 2.6 Data strategy ....................................................................................................17 Chapter 3: A language movement for global understanding and communication equality19 3.1 Beginnings of the Esperanto movement ..........................................................20 3.1.1 Creation of the Esperanto language: Zamenhof's dream realized .....20 3.1.2 Mobilizing a base: The pledge to learn the international language, the original list of Esperantists, and the address book practice .....22 3.2 Carving a niche in the world social space ........................................................23 3.2.1 Organizing a movement: The first world congress and the Boulogne Declaration establish the principles of the Esperanto movement ..23 3.2.2 Making it stick: the World Esperanto Association (UEA) ...............26 3.2.3 Seeking global recognition: Esperanto and the League of Nations ..28 3.2.4 Hybrid fields: Forming alliances or creating divisions? Esperanto in service of the labor movement .......................................................29 3.2.5 Stabilization of the Esperanto field as a secondary global field: UNESCO recognition of Esperanto as a global cultural heritage and failure to obtain recognition from the United Nations ............34 3.3 An international language as a unifying logic: The internal workings of the Esperanto field ...........................................................................................34 3.3.1 Self-identification with the international language and possession of language skills as illusio and capital of the Esperanto field ..........34 iii 3.3.2 "Eternal beginners" as low-status participants in the Esperanto movement .......................................................................................37 3.3.3 "No 'crocodiling' (speaking in one's native language) allowed here": Immersion as a skill-developing, disciplining, and status-defining practice ...........................................................................................38 3.3.4 Instrumental Esperantists as high-status participants .......................40 3.3.5 "The easiest international language": The simple ideology of the Esperanto movement ......................................................................42 3.4 Autonomy "wars" in the Esperanto field .........................................................44 3.4.1 Maintaining a boundary between Esperanto and the private/economic spheres: Tourism as an intermediary field ........44 3.4.2 Maintaining the boundary between Esperanto and the political field: Too cozy with the state? The Bulgarian Esperanto movement as a scapegoat of the political autonomy struggle .................................47 3.5 Summary and conclusion .................................................................................49 Chapter 4: The puzzling case of the Bulgarian democratic transition: A cooperative civil society behind the Iron Curtain? ..............................................................................51 4.1 Civil society actors ...........................................................................................52 4.1.1 Plurality of actor types and actor mandates ......................................52 4.1.2 Transnational social movements behind the Iron Curtain ................55 4.1.3 A cosmopolitan movement of the non-ruling cultural and professional elite ............................................................................67 4.2 An enduring political culture? .........................................................................70 4.2.1 Civility as fellowship ........................................................................70 4.2.2 Institutionalization of a comprehensive model of development .......75 4.3 Integrative civil society practices .....................................................................79 4.3.1 A neutral international language as the foundation of an international community .....................................................................................79 4.3.2 A three-level organizational infrastructure in service of overcoming spatial, political, and issue-related distances .................................80 4.3.3 Esperantujo (the Esperanto state): direct communication technologies ...................................................................................82 4.3.4 Mediated communication technologies ............................................82 4.4 Summary and conclusion .................................................................................83 Chapter 5: The making of an internationalist public behind the Iron Curtain: Bulgarian Esperantists construct a model of comprehensive development at the wake of World War II ............................................................................................................86