Seminar: Post-Soviet Societies of Eurasia - Details

General information

Course name	Seminar: Post-Soviet Societies of Eurasia
Subtitle	bei Dr. Tristam Barrett
Course number	BA: GKV
Semester	SS 2018
Current number of participants	1
expected number of participants	35
Home institute	Ethnologie/Kulturvergleichende Soziologie
participating institutes	Lectures and Courses in English (International Studies)
Courses type	Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date	Wednesday, 04.04.2018 14:15 - 15:45
Pre-requisites	Recommended Reading: Humphrey, Caroline. 2002. Introduction. The Unmaking of Soviet Life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Learning organisation	Besonderheiten: Der Kurs wird auf Englisch unterrichtet. Alle Studien- und Modulleistungen werden auf Englisch erbracht.
Performance record	Studienleistung: Wird in der ersten Stunde bekannt gegeben. Modulleistung: Hausarbeit
Studiengänge (für)	BA 60 und 90
SWS	2

Lehrende

• Tristam Barrett

Rooms and times

No room preference

Wednesday: 14:15 - 15:45, weekly(15x)

Fields of study

• Lectures and Courses in English (International Studies)
• Philosophische Fakultät I - Sozialwissenschaften und historische Kulturwissenschaften > Institut für Ethnologie und Philosophie
• Philosophische Fakultät I - Sozialwissenschaften und historische Kulturwissenschaften > Institut für Ethnologie und Philosophie > Ethnologie > Bachelor Ethnologie 60/90

Comment/Description

Course Description:
What was the Soviet Union and what has come next? This course will examine the Soviet and post-Soviet space as a world area, considering its social, political and economic development under and after socialism. It will examine what it was like to live in the constituent republics of the Soviet Union – including in the Caucasus and Central Asia – and whether and why common patterns (corruption, oligarchy, informal politics) can still be found in its successor states.
We shall explore the Soviet Union as a distinct socio-cultural system which impinged on people’s sense of culture, identity, and self; how economics defined interpersonal relations and social power; how the social structures and informal economies of Soviet socialism mediated the failed “transition” to market economy; and how present-day political economies of post-Soviet states have developed in the light of financial globalisation and polarisation.
We shall approach this from a broadly economic anthropological perspective, with a focus on daily life and the ways of thinking and interacting that define it. The course will be conducted in seminar format, based mainly on discussion of readings, with occasional lectures and films. Readings include some of the key texts produced by post-Soviet “insiders” and Western “outsiders” in the last two decades as well as the most recent contributions to the literature. Although the focus is on the post-Soviet world, the course may help students advance their knowledge of the relationship between political economy and social transformation more broadly.