Perilous States: Conversations on Culture, Politics, and NationEncompassing a range of disciplines—notably anthropology, politics, history, comparative literature, and philosophy—the unprecedented annual publication Late Editions exposes unsettling dilemmas and unprecedented challenges facing cultural studies on the brink of the twenty-first century. Successive volumes will appear annually until the year 2000, each engaging the predicaments of particular institutions, nations, and persons at this point of social, cultural, and political change. The project will test the limits of scholarly conventions by finding new ways to expose cultural formations emerging from the maturation or exhaustion of once-powerful ideas whose validity is now deeply in question. Perilous States, the first volume of Late Editions, presents conversations between American scholars, most of whom are anthropologists, and individuals situated amidst political and social upheaval. Pimarily but not exclusively from Eastern Europe, the cast includes Russian writers, Hungarian scientists and academics, Armenian politicians, Siberian religious and medical leaders, a Gypsy leader, a Polish poet, a French politician, and a white South African musician who is a self-styled Zulu. Their voices unite around themes of democracy, market economy, individual rights, and the reawakened force of suppressed ethnic and racial identities. To obtain fresh perspectives on these cultural and social transformations, the volumes will consist of in-depth conversations, relayed in essay form, between scholars and individuals in other cultures with whom they share affinities. This novel approach blends the immediacy of interviews, the objectivity of journalism, and the intellectual rigor of scholarship. Contributors to this volume are Marjorie Balzer, Sam Beck, David B. Coplan, Michael M. J. Fischer, Nia Georges, Bruce Grant, Douglas R. Holmes, Stella Gregorian, George E. Marcus, Kathryn Milun, Eleni Papagaroufali, Paul Rabinow, Julie Taylor, and Tom White. |
Contents
Introduction to the Series and to Volume 1 | |
Dirges for Soviets Passed | 9 |
Returning to Eastern Europe | 45 |
Six to Eight Characters in Search of American Civil Society amidst the Carnivalization of History | 73 |
Two Urban Shamans Unmasking Leadership in FindeSoviet Siberia | 123 |
Racism and the Formation of a Romani Ethnic Leader | 157 |
Working through the Other The Jewish Spanish Turkish Iranian Ukrainian Lithuanian and German Unconscious of Polish Culture or One Hand Clap... | 179 |
Greek Women in the Europe of 1992 Brokers of European Cargoes and the Logic of the West | 227 |
Illicit Discourse | 247 |
The Outlaw State and the Lone Rangers | 275 |
A Terrible Commitment Balancing the Tribes in South African National Culture | 297 |
A Preview of Volume 2 Reflections on Fieldwork in Alameda | 351 |
Contributors | 365 |
Index | 369 |
Common terms and phrases
Afrikaans Andrei anthropology Argentine Armenia Azerbaijan became called century CLEGG colored communist Communist Party COPLAN course cultural studies dance democratic Dirty War discourse economic elected ethnic Europe European feel film fin-de-siècle FISCHER FISCHER/GRIGORIAN friends GALSTIAN German GOLLNISCH GRANDPIERRE Greece Greek Gypsies HOLMES Hungarian Hungary idea identity ideology intellectuals interested interviews issues Jewish Jews Karabakh killed kind KOCZANOWICZ Komsomol language leaders Levon Ter-Petrossian live Marxism MILUN Moscow movement MTHETHWA nationalist olonkho organization PAPAGAROUFALI Parliament perestroika person play Poland Poles Polish culture political president problem RABINOW republic revolution role Romanian Russian Sakha Sakha Republic sense shaman Shembe social socialist society South African Soviet Union Stalin STRATIGAKI talk Ter-Petrossian theater things ţigani tion traditional Tucumán Ukrainian University uprising Vladimir vote Western WILLEMSE women writers Yakutsk Yerevan Zulu