Europe

Lives in Transition

Bettina Van Hoven, Tim Unwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138163515
• eBook ISBN: 9781317904427
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

First published in 2003. Europe: lives in transition gives a voice to people living through transition, opening a door for outsiders to understand how such people have lived - an opportunity for one to speak and another to listen. The book has been deliberately written in an accessible, engaging and first-hand manner. Original quotes from various projects are woven together throughout the text.This book focuses explicitly on the experiences of respondents and functions largely to introduce themes and speakers. The principal themes are: identities, relationships, production, consumption and power. Except for selected crucial theoretical and methodological discussions, any academic commentary, which might overshadow the words of the respondents, is kept to a minimum. A key aim is to engage the readers with the text by confronting them with their own preconceptions and geographical imaginations. Each chapter opens with two activity sections to help readers think about the themes in broader terms, for example, by doing some research themselves. Each chapter closes with two further activity sections for review and discussion.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Bettina van Hoven, Tim Unwin and Alienke Jansen

Thinking about transition

This transition, which affects about one-third of the world’s population, has been unavoidable [emphasis added]. The world is changing rapidly: massive increases in global trade and private investment in recent years have created enormous potential for growth in jobs, incomes, and living standards through free markets. Yet the state-dominated economic systems of these countries, weighed down by bureaucratic control and inefficiency, largely prevented markets from functioning and were therefore incapable of sustaining improvements in human welfare…. Necessary as the transition to the market has been, it has not been easy. Some countries have been considerably more successful than others in implementing the key elements of change (Wolfensohn 1996: iii).

Wolfensohn emphasises what the World Bank, and many others, saw as the inevitability of transition. This was the free market and liberal democracy, or what others might term ‘capitalism’. It is important to note that he sees the key failure of command economies, or communism, as being their inability to deliver improvements in human welfare. This is crucial, because it implies that the free market is the best economic system for delivering such welfare, and that it was failures in both the bureaucratic apparatus and the efficiency of the command economy that led to its demise. Yet, he is humble enough to recognise that transition has not been as easy as some of its most vociferous advocates had suggested, and he acknowledges that place matters. In other words, there was something very important about differences between countries on the eve of ‘transition’ that influenced their subsequent trajectories.

Transition was a powerful tool, created as an idea largely by neo-liberal economists in North America and Europe. It was eagerly embraced by politicians in Central and Eastern Europe, and was seen by many people living there (or here) as a remedy for their problems. But the reality of change was often harsh and cold. As Smith and Pickles (1998: 1–2) noted, ‘the conventional, neo-liberal view of transition wielded by western agencies and advisers to governments in Central and Eastern Europe was one which consisted of a relatively unproblematic implementation of a set of policies involving economic liberalisation and marketisation alongside democratisation, enabling the creation of a market economy and liberal polity.’ But, as they and others (Lynn 1999; Bradshaw and Stenning 2001) have so vividly illustrated, such a conceptualisation was, and still is, deeply problematic.

One difficulty with this conceptualisation of transition is that it was an external concept, owing very little to the ideas and experiences of the people who actually live in Central and Eastern Europe. Above all, Wolfensohn’s comments are those of an outsider; the vast majority of the references cited in the bibliography of From Plan to Market (World Bank 1996) are likewise works written in English by outsiders. Indeed, the voices of those who have lived through transition are only rarely heard in the extensive literature that has been written on transition. Only recently have academic papers and books begun to be devoted to the day-to-day lives of the people who have actually lived through the last decade in Central and Eastern Europe (see, for example, Berdahl et al. 2000; Hann 2002; Humphrey 2002; Mandel and Humphrey 2002). One of the central aims of this present book is thus, in contrast, to seek to understand the world of ‘transition’ from within; to listen to voices in other languages, from other places: What did it feel like to experience these changes at first hand? How did people react to these new situations? Why did they behave as they did? What were their dreams and hopes? What difference did place really make?

Approach of this book

At its heart, this book is about giving voice to the people living through transition; opening a door for other outsiders to seek to understand what these lives have been like; an opportunity to speak, and one to listen. In creating this tapestry of impressions, what we have sought to do is to combine the research interests and experiences of academics working largely in the West, with the voices of those with whom we have undertaken research in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. The majority of contributors are thus people who have been born and brought up in various parts of Northern and Western Europe and North America. A small number of the contributors were born in Central and Eastern Europe but have since developed their research careers in Western universities. The idea behind the book was to invite authors sympathetic to our project to share with us their interview and focus-group material, developed around a core set of themes which seem to us to reflect important characteristics of transition.

We have deliberately sought to escape from the constraints of established academic forms of writing. The most visible expression of this is in the way in which the chapters are constructed. Rather than asking authors each to write a chapter, their contributions are woven together throughout the book, with each contributor’s name being indicated as appropriate as well as regional and personal information on the respondent. Furthermore, in our requests to contributors, we explicitly asked them to provide us with original quotes (translated by them) rather than interpretations of these, so that it was the respondents’ voices that would be heard most readily. These quotes were then woven together into a text, which we hope is both coherent and ‘true’ not only to the contributors’ understandings, but also to the meanings intended by the original speakers. When the various Western contributors embarked on their many and varied research projects over the last decade they did so without any inkling that their work would subsequently be called upon as contributions to this book. Their projects reflected, amongst other things, their personal interests, their engagement with theoretical debates in their disciplines, and the serendipitous character of such things as success in research grant applications. Likewise, the people who were interviewed had little idea that their comments and thoughts would find their way into this book, and it is now not possible to contact many of those whose names and addresses were not garnered in the original research. However, by drawing on these voices and memories, we are seeking to give them a new audience. Far too often, academic papers simply summarise combined Western reinterpretations of interview material, and we are here eager to give a greater place to the original words of those interviewed. Certainly, something has been lost in translation, but by bringing them to a new audience we hope that their freshness and spontaneity will be rekindled, and that they will provide a new understanding of what it has been like to live through transition. The Western lens remains, however, and to understand the framework around which this text has been created it is essential to provide a short overview of some of the key theoretical and methodological issues that have helped to shape it. Chapters 2 (by John Pickles and Tim Unwin) and 3 (by Bettina van Hoven) address these issues in turn.

Pedagogical structure

Although this is a book largely for Geographers, we also want the book to be read and enjoyed by people from a wide diversity of backgrounds – it is most certainly not just a book for Geographers, and not just for academics. We hope that the style and content will make it accessible for anyone with an interest in how ‘transition’ has affected the lives of people living throughout Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. Except for the theoretical and methodological discussions in Chapters 2 and 3, this book is explicitly about the experiences of our respondents. In order to prioritise and emphasise their voices over ours, ‘academic’ interpretations were excluded and text was used largely to introduce the speakers and issues they raised within each theme. However, in a similar way as the contributors have struggled with their own preconceptions and geographical imaginations, we want to engage the students in a debate surrounding these issues. For that reason, the book is designed with a specific pedagogical structure.

Each chapter opens with two activity sections. The aim of these sections is to help students think about the theme of the chapter in broader terms. A key motivation is also to put Central and Eastern Europe and Russia more explicitly on their mental maps. Therefore, each chapter invites the students to do a little research themselves on the countries featured in the book. In the section ‘Finding facts’, the students assemble their own data base on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia (including some countries of the former Soviet Union) with the aid of a sample data entry sheet listing all countries and a selection of relevant issues as well as some Internet sources. In so doing, throughout the book, they will encounter differences and similarities between the regions and, hopefully, ask why. In addition, they may encounter some methodical problems related to the availability and presentation of data per country.

In the second section, ‘Understanding terms and concepts’, we highlight some of the terms and concepts relevant to the themes. They are meant to encourage the students to critically think through how and to what extent certain issues might have been important under socialism compared with today. We believe such thinking will help contextualise the experiences of people living through transition quoted in this book.

The third part, ‘… in transition’, presents these experiences. As an additional feature in this part, research notes are added for each quote. In so doing, we enable and encourage the students to use the book in a different way than simply reading it chapter-by-chapter. Instead, they can decontextualise and recontextualise quotes themselves, for example, by comparing them by country, gender or age group, or they can read quotes by project, i.e. contributor. The students may find the project descriptions that are included in Chapter 4, ‘Researching transition’, helpful for this activity. Keeping in mind that the order of quotes was imposed by Bettina, and is therefore artificial, the students may find another context of the quotes more suitable to their specific needs.

Sections four (‘Review and discussion’) and five (‘Perception and opinion’) are designed to bring this book and the voices within it closer to the everyday worlds of the students. These sections are meant to stimulate the positioning of the students in relation to the speakers in the book; the broadening of their imaginations of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia; and a debate around issues raised by the respondents. Some materials relevant to the tasks within these sections are included at the end of the book.

Last but not least, each chapter has a short list of suggested reading. These may help the student to get either a better impression of the context of a quote, or provide further information that contrasts the experiences in the chapter, thus highlighting the diversity of transition(s).

The themes

The way in which this book approaches transition is by examining people’s experiences of transition around a set of interconnected themes. While each of the chapters can be read separately for what they tell us about the themes that they address, there is also meant to be a logic in the way in which they are ordered. This essentially moves from the intimate and personal to the more public and external dimensions of transition.

Chapter 5 (‘Identities’) focuses explicitly on issues of identity and belonging. Key themes that it examines include the ways in which people have sought to adapt to externally imposed changes through a reinterpretation of their own identities and the places where they live. In part, this has been achieved through the creation of a range of different ‘others’ at various scales. Prior to the 1990s, for example, the West was seen as an other, whereas now many people who are eager to join the European Union, do so in opposition to their past ‘East-ern’ identities. For some, the collapse of the Soviet Union has enabled them to express long-suppressed aspects of specifically national or regional identities. For others, the changes associated with the emergence of liberal democracies have been disempowering instead.

Chapter 6 (‘Relationships’) then builds on these experiences of identity to develop an understanding of the ways in which human relationships have been expressed and understood before and during the 1990s. In particular, it seeks to identify the communities that people feel part of, and the ways in which these have been reshaped and organised. It explores, for example, how friendships and the role of the family are (re-) defined. While economic factors clearly have a significant part to play in defining these experiences, the chapter primarily addresses the social dimensions of the meaning of relationships.

Chapters 7 and 8, in contrast, turn overtly to economic matters, the former focusing mainly on production, while the latter addresses consumption and exchange. Chapter 7 (‘Production’) is thus comprised of accounts of regional programmes for economic development and various stories of success and struggle at different levels of urban and rural entrepreneurship. In its focus on rural production, the chapter examines people’s responses to the dramatic collapse in the agrarian economy that has occurred in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. This is followed by an account of the equally striking transformations that have taken place in industrial production, resulting from privatisation, foreign investment and the introduction of new management systems.

Chapter 8 (‘Consumption’) shifts the attention to experiences of consumption, beginning with the experiences of individual consumers and the ways in which the availability of new goods offers opportunities as well as imposing barriers. This is then followed by issues concerned with pollution and nature conservation. The final section of this chapter examines how changes in consumer needs are incorporated into production and sales strategies and how ‘the city’ has become a product that needs to be shaped according to consumer (i.e. tourist) needs and for which ‘sales strategies’ need to be devised.

Chapter 9 (‘Power’) turns to experiences of politics and power, examining not only how power is conceived and implemented, but also how new forms of democratic representation have been formulated. A key issue is, for example, the way in which collaboration with non-governmental organisations or the public aids or obstructs the making and implementation of policies. Another theme is the individual experience with democracy, in particular compared with the old regime. The subject of power is also illustrated with regard to experiences of minority groups.

We recognise that this remains a very partial account of how people have lived through transition, but in providing glimpses of these lives expressed through the words of the people themselves, we hope that they have shed a very different light on the processes of social, political, economic and ideological change from that which academics have usually chosen to portray. Some of the recollections highlight themes that we feel now require much more substantial research. Others reflect the transitions and changes that we have made in our own research and conceptualisations as we have been seeking to understand the transformations that have occurred across Europe. Yet others seek to draw out wider conclusions about the character of transition bas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Transition in context: Theory in post-socialist transformations
• 3 Understanding transition
• 4 Researching transition
• 5 Identities
• 6 Relationships
• 7 Production
• 8 Consumption
• 9 Power
• 10 Looking back on ‘Lives in transition’
• Materials
• Index