Newsnet News of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
NewsNet News of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies March 2018 v. 58, n. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Applying Post-Socialist Studies 3 outside Post-Soviet Space: The Many Washington, DCs Interview with Benjamin Peters, 8 Winner of the ASEEES 2017 Vucinich Book Prize The William Brumfield Russian 12 Architecture Digital Collection: From Database to Semantic Web 16 Spotlight: Johnson’s Russia List 17 Affiliate Group News 18 Publications ASEEES Prizes Call for 23 Submissions 29 In Memoriam 30 Institutional Member News Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) 203C Bellefield Hall, 315 S. Bellefield Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15260-6424 tel.: 412-648-9911 • fax: 412-648-9815 www.aseees.org ASEEES Staff Executive Director: Lynda Park 412-648-9788, [email protected] Communications Coordinator: Mary Arnstein 412-648-9809, [email protected] NewsNet Editor & Program Coordinator: Andrew Behrendt 412-648-7403, aseees.grants@pitt. edu Membership Coordinator: Jacob Boehmer 412-648-9911, [email protected] Financial Support: Krystina Rigdon 412-648-4049, [email protected] Convention Manager: Margaret Manges 412-648-4049, [email protected] 50th ASEEES Annual Convention 6 – 9 December 2018 Boston Marriott Copley Place Celebrating the ASEEES’ 70th Anniversary and 50th Convention Help us celebrate our anniversaries by sharing your memories of the past ASEEES conventions by sending us memorable stories and pictures* from past conventions. Please include the year the photo was taken and names of all people in the picture. Send to: [email protected] or post them in the ASEEES Commons group “Celebrating ASEEES Anniversaries”. Your story and photos may be shared during the Convention. *Please DO NOT send your original photos. We cannot guarantee the return of original photos. Applying Post-Socialist Studies outside Post- Soviet Space: The Many Washington, DCs1 JOHANNA BOCKMAN GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, PRINCETON, NJ ver the past three years, I have been conducting a historical study of gentrification and displacement in Washington, DC. At the same time, I have also been working on a project about the 1980s debt crisis from the perspectives of the Second and Third Worlds. I find it stressful to work on very different projects Oand follow several, very different literatures – for example, on the one hand, American urban sociology and, on the other, Eastern European Studies focused on economics and finance. It often seems like I am operating in two different, unconnected worlds. This sense of disassociation results at least in part from the post-1989 reorientation and ultimately destruction of networks that had once connected these worlds and literatures. Here I explore these connections and apply the lessons of post-socialist studies to a less conventional space, specifically Washington, DC. Post-socialism may seem irrelevant to DC since it has long been a major center of RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY capitalism. However, one could argue that everyone, and especially major actors in the http://aseees.org/membership Cold War, have experienced “the global post-socialist condition” in some form or other NEWSNET March 2018 2 NEWSNET March 2018 3 (Gille 2010). The city of the International Clinton administration transformed Fourth, post-socialist studies • low-income housing cooperatives; Dwellings were moved out in order to Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank neoliberalism by putting forth policies encourages us to revisit supposedly renovate the apartments, but only in 1996 • a local charity (funded by profits from reshaped Soviet and post-Soviet space, in support of the state, markets, public- universal social science concepts could real estate developers and white the other cooperatives to develop relating to it in new ways. Yet, there are private partnerships (rather than (Dzenovska and Kurtović 2017; homeowners nearby successfully have social action programs like schools, many DCs. For example, in the late 1970s, complete privatization), technocracy, Hann 2002; Rogers 2010), such as the buildings destroyed and replaced hospitals, and child development the city of Black Power forged DC into a and the formation of neoliberal “globalization.” with a mixed-income development. Only centers). democratic socialist space, connecting subjects. Similar to the international As part of my research on DC, I am seven of the previous 134 families were many parts of the city to the socialist 2 Givens understood these cooperatives shift from the Washington Consensus , studying a small public housing project ever able to return to the development. and Third Worlds. After 1989, within as working together, forming an which supported the free market and called the Ellen Wilson Dwellings, which This gentrification focused on removing DC, the city of the IMF and the World integrated model of community privatization, to the Post-Washington had 134 apartments and existed from concentrations of low-income African Bank implemented the same shock of development outside of conventional Consensus, which recognized the 1941 to 1996. In the US, public housing Americans to disperse them as a post-socialist neoliberalism that Black capitalism (Bockman 2016). need for the state and social programs, residents had developed grassroots Ellen Wilson Dwellings, 1941 political constituency and an obstacle Power fought against. The lessons of neoliberalism in the US shifted from organizing through tenant councils These are just a few examples of the to expanding capitalist space and to post-socialist studies should, in fact, be dismantling of the state to reorganizing locally and nationally (Williams 2004). transnational socialist spaces in DC. Of replace them with residents who would helpful to the study of DC. Here I have put nationalism, and Pan-Africanism. In this it, more in line with neoliberalism as Tenant councils, like that at the Ellen course, this socialism is quite different support a neoliberal city. together a list of potential applications of understood by Michel Foucault (2008). basement center, residents could use Wilson Dwellings, not only advocated from state socialism. At the same time, As Eastern Europe severed many of these lessons. As 1989 brought the first neoliberalism, the day care center and take a variety for repairs, security, and lower utility these socialist spaces existed in networks its socialist-era global connections and 1993 brought this second neoliberalism, of classes including African drumming. First, socialist and post-socialist bills, but also took part in broader social connecting other socialist worlds. Global turned toward the European Community, realized internationally and in DC. In 1995, Their own group, the Ujamaa Dancers chronologies are useful. During the 1980s, movements, making public housing black power and other movements – such gentrification expanded capitalist the same year as the Bokros package in and Drummers, performed for Black the Reagan administration severely an important political, economic, and as the non-aligned movement, Yugoslav geographies with their own imaginaries. Hungary, the US Congress took over the nationalist ceremonies around DC and cut domestic budgets and sought to cultural space. By the 1980s, public worker self-management socialism, Gentrification destroyed certain spaces DC government to implement austerity, beyond. destroy particular agencies, such as housing residents constituted about ten and feminist movements – sought and networks, reconstructing these enforce fiscal discipline, and realize a mix Housing and Urban Development (HUD). percent of DC’s population (Gillette 1995: Public housing also became a site new forms of economic ownership, spaces with new networks as if on a of both neoliberalisms. In 1989, with the arrival of the Bush 197) and thus were an important political for cooperative experiments. In 1970, decentralization, direct participation, tabula rasa. However, the fifth applicable administration, a group of libertarians Third, post-socialist studies cautions constituency. the Arthur Capper public housing and cultural recognition as a program for lesson of post-socialist studies is that it calling themselves “the perestroika project, just a block from Ellen Wilson, radical social change. These movements us to be wary of transitology. From early Public housing residents could also made us question the existence of group” gained influence in the White formed a food cooperative named the created new political spaces and new on, anthropologists and sociologists mobilize resources from other tabulae rasae, suggesting that they are House, and, in early 1990, celebrated a Martin Luther King Cooperative Food commons. These socialist geographies criticized transitology for its teleology, globalizations to protect themselves often a delusion held by the powerful “new paradigm” characterized by market- Store. By the early 1980s, it served over shared similar imaginaries and networks. which imagined a quick and easy shift from the global neoliberal project. (Gille 2010). While Keynesianism took orientation, decentralization, choice, and 2000 customers. Without home rule from state socialism to liberal democracy Ellen Wilson Dwellings residents had In the late 1980s, expanding capitalist its shape from the radical socialist empowerment (Rowl and Novak 1990). before 1975, DC residents, and African and free-market capitalism. Scholars transnational socialist connections. geographies sought to take over movements of the 1920s and 1930s,