Publisher's Synopsis
**Articles: * "Sensory Utopia in the Times of 'Cultural Revolution': On Art, Public Space, and the Moral Ontology of Class," Anna Kruglova (in English). Growing out of class delineations in former USSR, the tension between two aesthetic/ethical stances was brought to a particularly stark relief in a recent contestation of public space in a mid-size Russian city. The article explores how the intellectualist and dystopic mode of engagement with the world is juxtaposed with the "sensory utopia" sensibility that asserts not only the givenness but also the goodness of emotional embeddedness in one's reality. Instead of condemning uncomplicated pleasures as reactionist recourse to "simpler pasts" growing out of traumas of postsocialism, I suggest exploring them as a phenomenon in their own right, a cultural resource for the development of new identities and collectivities. * "Postsocialist Bazaars: Diversity, Solidarity, and Conflict in the Marketplace," Gertrud Huwelmeier (in English). Prior to the collapse of communism, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese migrants arrived in various localities throughout COMECON countries through programs of "socialist solidarity." Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, many former contract workers have become entrepreneurs, mostly engaged in trade. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in bazaars in Berlin, Prague, and Warsaw, this paper looks at spatial continuities between the socialist past and the postsocialist present, mobility and transnational social and economic practices, and bazaars as sites of power and conflict. * "Discreet Economy: Luxury Hospitality in the Context of Postsocialist Transformation of Czech Society," Iveta Hajdakova (in English). In the Czech Republic, popular discourse on service workers is characterized by complaints about poor level of hospitality resulting from the country's socialist history. However, there are luxury restaurants that are considered a mark of individual success and of economic transformation. This article looks at one luxury restaurant in Prague and shows how hospitality, luxury, and inequalities between workers and customers were negotiated and contested by workers. I introduce the concept of discreet economy to analyze exchanges between agents, inequalities between them, and workers' strategies of resistance. * "Between Past and Present: Dealing with Transformation in Rural Poland," Agnieszka Pasieka (in English). Based on ethnographic fieldwork of a rural region of southern Poland, this article discusses experiences of postsocialist transformation. Rural inhabitants today face problems of unemployment and instability, as both closure of state-owned farms and Poland's accession to the EU have reshaped the agricultural sector. But rather than being passive observers of these changes, people are determined to shape their own lives and the place they inhabit. Examining new forms of social organization, cooperation, and leadership, I describe local people's ability to creatively draw on their socialist experiences, adapting them to new contexts and transforming them into strategies for coping with new challenges. * "The 'Vertical of Shamanic Power': The Use of Political Discourse in Post-Soviet Tuvan Shamanism," Ksenia Pimenova (in English). This article addresses the shaping of institutionalized organizations in post-Soviet shamanism south Siberia. I argue that many organizational features of today's shamanism result from the creative integration of legal, academic, and political concepts that have been elaborated under the Soviet/Russian state governance but were historically alien to shamanic practice and discourse. Starting from the early 1990s, the leaders of the Tuvan shamanic revival used these concepts pragmatically in order to take advantage of their relationship with authorities, to assure a better public place for their organizations, and to establish their authority over the shamanic network."
