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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Redefining Need, Reconfiguring Expectations: The Rise Of State-Run Youth Voluntarism Programs In Russia, Julie D. Hemment
Redefining Need, Reconfiguring Expectations: The Rise Of State-Run Youth Voluntarism Programs In Russia, Julie D. Hemment
Julie D Hemment
This article investigates the restructuring of the Russian social welfare system by interrogating Putin-era state-run projects to promote youth voluntarism. Set up in the aftermath of liberalizing social welfare reform, these organizations are interesting hybrids: at the same time as they honor the Soviet past and afford symbolic prominence to Soviet era values, they simultaneously advance distinctively neoliberal technologies of self-help and self-reliance. In dialogue with recent studies in the anthropology of neoliberalism and the anthropology of postsocialism, I consider the implications of these intertwined logics. Focusing on the interpretive work undertaken by one provincial voluntary organization, I argue that …
Nashi, Youth Voluntarism And Potemkin Ngos: Making Sense Of Civil Society In Post-Soviet Russia, Julie D. Hemment
Nashi, Youth Voluntarism And Potemkin Ngos: Making Sense Of Civil Society In Post-Soviet Russia, Julie D. Hemment
Julie D Hemment
This article tracks the aftermath of international development aid in post-Soviet Russia socialist space by interrogating Putin-era civil society projects. State-run organizations such as the pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi (Ours) are commonly read as evidence of anti-democratic backlash and confirmation of Russia’s resurgent authoritarianism. Contributing to recent scholarship in the anthropology of postsocialism, this article seeks to account for Nashi by locating it in the context of fifteen years of international democracy promotion, global processes of neoliberal governance and the disenchantments they gave rise to. Drawing on a collaborative ethnographic research project with scholars and students in the provincial city …