Katherine Verdery - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Katherine Verdery

This paper describes the general conditions —first in the post-Soviet space as a whole, then in R... more This paper describes the general conditions —first in the post-Soviet space as a whole, then in Romania— that led increasing numbers of Romanians to migrate from rural areas for temporary or permanent work in other European countries, after the collapse of socialism in 1989/1991. It explains the process of property restitution that recreated private land ownership, as well as government policies that made it very difficult for new owners to make a living from their farms. Because of a widening price scissors between the costs of production and the prices of farm products, by the year 2000 many Romanian villagers could no longer afford to work their land. As a result, they entered into large circuits of migration, chiefly to Italy and Spain. The larger process in which these villagers were participating was a change in the international pool of migrant labor, newly augmented by victims of the transformation from East European socialism.

Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia, 2017

American Ethnologist, 2019

Focaal, 2010

Like other area specialists, I was astonished when, in the spring of 1989, the Hungarians took do... more Like other area specialists, I was astonished when, in the spring of 1989, the Hungarians took down the barbed wire separating them from Austria and the Poles elected the first non-communist prime minister, without arousing repercussions from the Soviet Union. I followed with amazement the news of what was happening in East Germany in late summer and fall—the hoards of people camping out in embassies, the ever-larger demonstrations in Leipzig.

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2016

Comment on Price, David. 2016. Cold War anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the growth of du... more Comment on Price, David. 2016. Cold War anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the growth of dual use anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Anthropology of East Europe Review, 1983

Belvedere Meridionale, 2014

U.S. anthropologists working in Romania in the 1970s and 1980s were under surveillance by the Rom... more U.S. anthropologists working in Romania in the 1970s and 1980s were under surveillance by the Romanian Securitate, as they probably were in other communist countries as well. This article is based on the author's Securitate file, which a law passed in 1999 made available to anyone whom the Securitate had followed. It discusses similarities between the work of ethnographers and that of the Securitate, the question whether villagers believed that she was really a spy and the effects of the surveillance on the author's own work and on the villagers she studied.

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2013

The first phase of Romania's communization-the ascent of the Communist Party to power-took place ... more The first phase of Romania's communization-the ascent of the Communist Party to power-took place between 1944 (when it gained a toehold in government coalitions) and 1948, by which time it had fully consolidated its position over other political formations, thanks to the Soviet Army, and could begin implementing its agenda. Near the top of the list was collectivization of agriculture-a mammoth task, given that over 75% of the entire population was employed in that sector. To accomplish this, Party leaders developed a number of technologies, including propaganda, food requisitions, various methods of "persuasion," fomenting class warfare, and outright brutality. All of them were highly labor-intensive, requiring Party cadres to interact closely with individuals and households in Romania's many rural settlements. They required, in brief, a sizable and well-trained apparatus of cadres. In this paper I discuss some of the characteristics of these cadres and the problem of their abuses of power as they sought to force peasants into the collectives. I discuss these abuses without offering extensive documentation, of which a great deal exists, but take them as given. I offer some reasons why I believe they were so common, suggesting how this relates to the nature of power in the communist Party-state, and I propose some of the social considerations that mitigated their occurrence. Overall, my aim is to open up the world of Party cadres, a world that has not been much explored.

The Journal of Modern History, 1985

Focaal, 2004

Throughout the Cold War, most people in the US saw the communist party-states of the Soviet bloc ... more Throughout the Cold War, most people in the US saw the communist party-states of the Soviet bloc as all-powerful regimes imposing their will on their populations. The author, a child of the Cold War, began her fieldwork in Romania in the 1970s in this belief. The present essay describes how her experiences in Romania between 1973 and 1989 gradually forced her to see things differently, bringing her to realize that centralization was only one face of a system of rule pervaded by barely controlled anarchy and parasitism on the state. It was not simply that the regime had failed to change people's consciousness; rather, the system's operation was actively producing something quite different. These insights contributed to the author's developing a new model of the workings of socialism.

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 1994

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2008

Lenin spoke at the Second Congress of 1920 to multiple audiences. In continuity with the First In... more Lenin spoke at the Second Congress of 1920 to multiple audiences. In continuity with the First International, he spoke in the utopian language of Bolshevism, of the successful revolutionary proletariat that had taken the state and was making its place in history without the intercession of bourgeois class rule. Recognizing the limits of socialism in one country surrounded by the military and economic might of “World imperialism,” however, Lenin also pressed for a broader, ongoing world-historic anti-imperialism in alliance with the oppressed of the East, who, it seemed, were neither sufficiently proletarianized, nor, as yet, subjects of history. There are many ways to situate this particular moment in Lenin's thought. One can see the budding conceits of Marxist social history, or “history from below,” in which millions in the East could become historical subjects under the sign of “anti-imperialism.” One can also see this gesture to those outside the pale as a flourish of the em...

Conservation and Society, 2004

IN THEIR INTRODUCTION to this set of articles, Janet Sturgeon and Tomas Sikor ask whether we are ... more IN THEIR INTRODUCTION to this set of articles, Janet Sturgeon and Tomas Sikor ask whether we are justified in lumping together Central European and East Asian cases of property transformation. Their answer to this question is 'yes', despite significant differences that ...

American Anthropologist, 2009

American Anthropologist, 2002

violence. He also cautions us against both the declared intentions of the parties and the search ... more violence. He also cautions us against both the declared intentions of the parties and the search for suprahistorical causes and consequences. Georg Elvert looks at a group of civil wars in Africa and elsewhere as "markets of violence." Market is more than metaphor here, the struggle being for access to commodities along with increasing sale of violence while political passions serve as smokescreen. The situation self-stabilizes, and the longer the violence lasts the stronger the compulsion to follow economic imperatives. Jiirg Helbling writes on the paradigmatic Yanomami in a fresh and stimulating way. It recasts this multipolar political realm as a "prisoner's dilemma" situation in the sense of game theory, an approach productive of unexpected and highly persuasive insights. Erdmute Alber presents a vivid picture of late-19th-century northern Benin, its warlords, farmers, and herders. Her analysis of the permeability of social and physical boundaries and the commonplace nature of raids is warning against the king and empire infatuation of precolonial history and an eye-opener for fieldworkers in other parts of West Africa. This historical yet not too remote Warre invites comparison with the Yanomami, but in complexity and heterogeneity and its ties to the Atlantic world, the setting is closer to the other contemporary cases. The thematic novelty signals the postcolonial emancipation of African historical ethnography. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers explores the conceptual struggles that promote and contain feuding in northern Albania, which resurged as an unstoppable force after 50 years of dormancy during communist government. Dieter Neubert bravely turns to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. He notes pointedly that Rwanda is one of the few countries in Africa with only one national language and explains with clarity how stratification was ethnicized during the colonial period. Most of the chapter is on the four years of progressive escalation leading to the planning and coldblooded execution of the genocide. Equally disturbing to the conscience in this analysis are the callous indifference of the international community and the conclusion that the killings reached their massive scale partly because the weaker party refused to accept the racial definition of the conflict, which was promoted in a calculated way officially. Tim Allen discusses the international missions of humanitarian relief to war-torn places. He includes an account of the development of institutions, practices, and ideas since the Biafra war and other events of the 1960s. It is incredibly well informed, both on the UN-U.S. relief establishment and the NGO world. He concludes that emergency relief, with or without muscle, often helped institutionalize armed conflict, encouraged the emergence of local war economies, and ielnforced the war parties. t.erhard Grohs compares and contrasts the peace-making ink-of the Catholic Chuuli and the 1'iotestant Christian Council in the conflicts that ton-El Salvador and Mozambique

Revista Română de Sociologie, 2008

This essay synthesizes work on the property regime of Soviet-type societies, using examples from ... more This essay synthesizes work on the property regime of Soviet-type societies, using examples from Romania. Its aim is to correct the assumption common among western economists and policy-makers that there was no property in socialist societies (see, e.g., Frydman and Rapaczynski) and therefore no obstacles to privatization. On the contrary, socialist property was clearly articulated, and its organization had strong implications for how socialist firms might be privatized. Thus, what looked like a “property vacuum” to western advisors proved to be very full of property rules and relations, which impeded satisfactory privatization even years after the collapse of communist parties.

Peasants under Siege

This chapter focuses on the Party and Securitate cadres who implemented collectivization, describ... more This chapter focuses on the Party and Securitate cadres who implemented collectivization, describing aspects of their recruitment, their work, and their life as activists. Party cadres had the task of bringing the imported engineering project to life; they were the ones entrusted with the power to construct a new social order and also to construct the very forms of power that would sustain it. The chapter then argues that because the Party achieved power without an adequate number of prepared and ideologically committed cadres, certain compromises followed. First, their work would rely more on force than on persuasion, and therefore peasants would end by joining collectives only pro forma rather than from conviction. Second, the exigencies of cadres' work led them to develop networks, which protected them while making the bureaucratic apparatus more personalistic.

What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?