Is There an Anthropology of Socialism?
Steven Sampson
Anthropology Today, Vol. 7, No. 5. (Oct., 1991), pp. 16-19.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0268-540X%28199110%297%3A5%3C16%3AITAAOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5
Anthropology Today is currently published by Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/rai.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic
journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,
and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take
advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
http://www.jstor.org
Fri Mar 14 05:57:29 2008
in rural areas but take a keen interest in
those who are actually involved. They tend
not to pressurize implementing agencies for
results but like to be kept informed of
progress. They will also ask what has
happened if work appears to be delayed. A
fair description of this is perhaps
'enlightened detachmenť.
Were there personaliv clashes?
Unfortunately, these arose with more
frequency than I had hoped. They were
sometimes very constructive. The cases
relating to shoddy work are quite
illuminating.
Some Maldivian staff would take great
exception to others who were not
performing well. The individual concerned
became very unpopular. If bad work
continued the person involved would be
ostracized and become completely isolated.
Without exception staff treated in such a
way would sooner or later resign. In this
way a degree of discipline was maintained.
The most destructive personality clashes
occurred both within the expatriate group
and between them and other staff.
Individuals cannot be blamed for this. It is
the result of the difficulty many outsiders
(both from the city within the Maldives and
overseas) face in coming to terms with life
on these small islands. Rural Maldivians
have developed strategies which primarily
reduce the possibility of disputes occurring.
Their lives are rather restrained. They tend
not to be impetuous, demanding or
aggressive. Those who cannot adopt similar
strategies were bound to face severe
difficulties. In two cases these led to the
departure of the expatriate staff member in
question. In others, work was delayed and
cancelled. Thus, as mentioned previously,
more developmental initiatives failed due to
the involvement of outsiders than perhaps all
other factors combined.
My final fear was that, as an
anthropologist, I would not be successful as
a manager. It is not right that I should
answer this. I can only make the following
general observations.
Project management was neither easy nor
a task I relished. It involved, in ways for
which I could never be properly prepared,
making many decisions concerning people's
lives. Yet, helped by the fact that there were
IS THERE AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF SOCIALISM? 

The demise of so much of the socialist
'Second Worlď would seem to obviate the
need for the anthropological study of
socialism. Indeed, anthropologists were no
better than other social scientists in that they
failed to understand - much less predict the
rapid and ongoing collapse of Marxist
parties and socialist states. Some basic questions
remain. How were societies with such
fundamental contradictions able to reproduce
themselves for so long? Why did such seemingly
solid polities fall apart like a house of
cards? Why did leaders so used to ruling by
force give up power non-violently? Why did
those who staged the attempted coup in the
Soviet Union not use the tanks and guns
they had at their disposal? And what is it
that is being rebuilt in these 'postcommunisť
societies?
These questions are relevant not only for
the Eastern Europe of 1989, where
Gorbachev's own reform efforts and the
existence of Soviet troops were key efforts
in shaping the character of these
democratization movements. They are
equally important for understanding what is
happening in societies not subject to the
'Gorbachev effecť: e.g., Albania, Ethiopia,
Angola, Benin and Mozambique. China,
Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea all appear
to be bedrock socialist states. But their
seeming stability may crumble as rapidly as
did the stable, repressive regimes of East
Gemany and Romania two years ago.
The theme of the 1991 conference of the
Association of Social Anthropologists,
convened in Cambridge last April by Chris
Hann, was 'Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and
Practice'. Papers were invited on a wide
range of topics: primitive communism,
Marxist tradition, empirical analyses of
socialist societies, and 'comparable social
experiments'. As with most broadly defined
thematic conferences, the resulting 25 papers
varied in both relevance to the theme and
quality.
In the tradition of socialist gatherings, the
ASA conference opened with an invocation
of Lenin, by Aidan Southall, who noted
Lenin's naivetC, elitism and
authoritarianism. One is reminded of the
words of Oscar Wilde: 'The trouble with
socialism is that it takes up too many
evenings'. Fortunately, the remainder of the
evening, devoted to socialism in Britain and
Italy, proved more engaging. Cris Shore
explained why the Communist Party of
Great Britain refused to change its name to
'Socialisť: an S PGB would have been
deprived of money and property originally
willed to the CPGB. Sue Wright discussed
how Teesside's labourist mobilization of
the working class competed with the new
urban lefťs mobilization of 'ordinary
people'. Labourist policies are here equated
with 'socialism'. Italo Pardo provided a
description of why the PC1 in Naples was
no serious mistakes, I accepted the
responsibility and often enjoyed the
challenge. It gave me the opportunity to put
my skills into practice and actually
accomplish something tangible. This could
easily be isolated because I have fortunately
been able to follow the process through from
beginning to (project) end.
One real benefit has been educational. All
involved have participated in a learning
exercise which has generally been
worthwhile. Most project staff (including
myself) and the communities now have
greater faith in their abilities and are clearly
capable of doing far more than was the case
before the project started.
In retrospect, I do not think the fear
concerning management skills was valid.
Anthropology and management are not two
incompatible skills. They can just as easily
complement each other. It is possible to be
both at the same time. I have had a valuable
and exciting four years managing this
project. Only time will tell, and the people
of Shaviyani will know, the extent to which
it has been successful. C] [Concluded]
Geoffrey Grzffith
losing its natural constituency despite good
intentions.
How states rule
The six papers on Africa focused on two
themes: the state's attempts to impose its
will in local communities. and culture and
tradition as rhetorical devices or popular
weapons. In Angola (Sue Fleming's paper)
the state continued to control women, and in
Tanzania (Pat Caplan), the gap was maintained
between villagers who are 'us' and a
distant, bureaucratic 'them'. Also in Tanzania,
Ray Abrahams and Sufian Bukurura
showed how the ruling party and
bureaucracy manipulated and subordinated
grass-roots vigilante groups. Socialism
created both the cattle thieves and the
vigilante groups to combat them.
Ralph Grillo explored how the term
'African' was employed in the ideology of
African Socialism. The rhetorical emphasis
on 'Africanness' helped in post-colonial
consciousness raising, while 'traditions of
cooperation and social responsibility' were
utilized as rhetorical smokescreens for an
emerging state capitalist bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy's manipulation of
'traditional culture' is not peculiar to
socialist states, but may be more visible
because socialist states make broader efforts
to control economic and political resources.
In Angela Cheater's paper on Zimbabwe,
Rasta-infatuated youth use their 'culture of
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol7 No 5, October 199116
resistance' against the state. The regime
which began by denigrating traditional
culture in the name of socialism now
re-invents traditional cultural performances;
it reifies patriarchy in order to foster a cult
of personality.
Survivalsand revivals
The two papers on China dealt with the question
of 'traditional legacies'. Kwang-ok Kim
provided a subtle analysis of tradition in
China. The Chinese state consciously allows
certain cultural expressions to appear continuous,
while vigorously repressing or transforming
others. The CCP folklorizes
tradition in order to propound a cultural
nationalism. The villagers, however, are not
simply objects of state policy. They, too,
manipulate weddings, funerals and ancestral
worship to achieve individual or family
status goals.
After two decades of fieldwork in China,
Jack Potter concluded that much
pre-socialist tradition has survived. Yet
Potter fails to distinguish traditional
survivals from resurgences in a new context.
The situation in China is much more
complicated than Potter's problematic of
'change' versus 'continuity'. Several distinct
processes seem to be at work: the survival of
cultural forms which the state has been
unable to suppress, the state's resuscitation
and manipulation of local cultural
expressions, and the popular reinvention of
traditions in new contexts. In post- Mao
China, traditions can be invented,
circumvented, reinvented and contrived.
The resurgence of traditionalism is a result
of decollectivisation. Traditions can be the
work of the party, not the result of its
absence.
The three papers on the USSR all dealt
with the Soviet periphery and the local
consequences of recent political changes.
Whether it is Siberia, the Caucasus or the far
north, all are witnessing the breakdown of
central control, retreat of state ideological
hegemony, and rise of autonomous loci of
power. Caroline Humphrey describes how
political decentralization in the absence of
local democracy has consolidated provincial
mafias in Western Siberia (the Buryat).
Decline of political control from the centre
combined with economic dislocations has
led to economic insecurity, anomie,
anti-Russian violence, and protectionist
rackets. A system in collapse generates a
new kind of social structure.
In Christian Georgia and Muslim
Azerbaijan, Tamara Dragadze discussed the
role of religion, and the prospects for
religious specialists to reclaim rituals which
had been 'domesticateď by the laity during
more repressive times. As the nationalist
project of the Caucasian republics succeeds,
the overlap between religion and nationalism
will disappear.
Piers Vitebsky's fascinating paper on
Siberian reindeer herders deals with
re-vivals rather than sur-vivals. The Evgeny
traditionalist groups ally with modem,
Russian 'green' environmentalist
organizations against Soviet mining
interests. In the Soviet far north, grassroots
politics intersects with re-shamanization.
From Central Europe, Ladislav Holy
analysed the Czech revolution, showing the
link between intellectuals and workers, and
the prominence of actors as the only
intellectuals whose 'strike' could be
noticeably perceived. Holy's failure to
provide any comparisons to other East
European revolutions, nor to note alternative
explanations of the Czech events, is
regrettable. Peter Skalnik, from fieldwork in
a Slovak village, remarks on the 'survivals'
of socialist egalitarian mentality and
authoritarian political culture among
villagers, viewing these as an impediment to
further modernization.
Frances Pine described the triple role of
Polish women: in household organization
and child care; agricultural work often in the
face of male absence; and their involvement
in market activities. Post-socialist Poland exemplified
today in the abortion debate - is
proving to be as anti-feminine as were the
practices of the socialist regime.
Ethnicity and nationalism
Three other papers on Eastern Europe dealt
explicitly with ethnic topics: group competition,
'nation' as construct, and the Gypsy
minority. Katherine Verdery notes the congruence
of social and ethnic networks in
Romania. The dislocations of economic transition,
inasmuch as it creates competition between
social networks, will also spawn
create ethnic tensions. The resurgence of
traditional ethnic animosities is thus a result
of economic dislocations, exacerbated by the
use of raw ethnic-cultural nationalism freed
of Marxist rhetoric.
Polish history textbooks were used by
Zdzislaw Mach to analyse how the concept
of 'nation' is projected. Mach notes the
Polish tendency to overlook Polanďs
continuing boundary readjustments, neglect
the role of Soviet hegemony, and ignore the
decisive presence of German, Jewish and
Ukrainian minorities in Polish history.
'Polanď is not a place or a people, but an
historically and ethnically purified construct.
Regrettably, Mach's paper could have been
written a decade ago.
Finally in Eastern Europe, Michael
Stewart discussed how Hungarian Vlach
Gypsies successfully used wage labour to
sustain their resistance to Hungarian social
integration. The Gypsy problem has become
a predominant ethnic issue in all the East
European countries.
The papers on southeast Asia had a more
vague connection to the themes of the
conference. Grant Evans examined the
limited influence of Theravada Buddhism on
economic action in Laos.
Jonathan Spencer contrasted the
'welfarism' of Sri Lanka with the villagers'
cultural and moral revulsion when benefits
were distributed unequally.
A final set of papers dealt with the
underlying conceptual basis for socialism in
egalitarianism. Alan Barnard elucidated
Kropotkin's description of the Bushmen as a
society of egalitarian mutual aid. Joanna
Overing described how Western
characterizations of Amazon groups as either
collectivist or individualist reveal more
about our own cultural categories than
theirs. Finally, Ernest Gellner discussed one
Soviet ethnologisťs attempt to explain the
emergence of primitive communism in terms
of Darwinian selection for groups which
shared meat. Egalitarianism is not a state of
nature but a historical product.
Socialism as secular religion
In his summary comments, Keith Hart
defined socialism as a secular religion based
on rationality and control. Studying how
these ideologies are put into practice leads
us to better understand other phenomena:
ethnicity and class; nationalism and internationalism;
and resistance to the state using
the resources of family, ethnicity and cultural
revivals. Harťs concise conclusions,
1960's style polemic, and acclaim to the
papers he liked best - more a pot pourri
than a tour de force - made David Parkin's
closing remarks seem anticlimactic in style.
Yet Parkin managed to emphasize that
socialism, being an idealized system of
distributive justice, contains political,
economic and moral dimensions amenable
to anthropological study. Socialism contains
sophisticated notions of collectivism, of
idealized social forms and their associated
ethos. Primitive communism is the Garden
of Eden and private property and classes
cause a Fall from Grace. Like other cultural
systems, there are heroes, villains and icons:
Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Mao. There are sacred
texts and official interpreters. There is the
notion of infallibility, of ritual celebrations
of the social order. There are icons, schisms,
heresies, and religious campaigns, ideas of
sacrifice for a higher order. And there is
disillusionment by former members of the
church. Today there is iconoclasm: flags
with holes in them, mausoleums whose
'dead kings' are removed, and changes of
names for streets, cities, and countries.
Not the last word
To study the culture of socialism, then, we
must understand its moral and ideological
dimension as much as the concrete realities
of socialist or ex-socialist states. The ASA
conference did not live down to Oscar
Wilde's dictum, but it should hardly be considered
the last word on the anthropology of
socialism. Shortcomings abounded. It is
regrettable that there were no papers on
Solidarity, on the inner structure of communist
parties, on the GDR and failed German
identity, on ethnicity in Yugoslavia, on
charisma in Cuba, on Latin America generally,
nor on the failure of socialism in the US,
THROPOLOGY TODAY Vo17 No 5, October
nor more on the effect of events in Eastern
Europe on the various Marxist-communist
sects in the West (why was 1989 the year of
the bankruptcy of Western marxist parties
and not 1980,1968 or 1956?) What goes on
inside the Albania-allied parties as this bastion
of communism turns capitalist? Why do
parties vote to dissolve themselves?
Nor did this conference contain a single
genuinely comparative paper, a curious
shortcoming for an anthropology conference.
One might fault the organizers for taking the
easy way out in grouping the papers by
regions instead of by themes. One might
have wished to see an outsider - some
non-anthropologist big-shot in the field of
Comparative Communist Studies - offer a
view of the conference. The comparative
study of socialism has existed for decades.
The discipline, which studies Marxist parties
and communist states, generates journals
(e.g. Communist Studies), conference
volumes, and even degrees (Glasgow) which
treat under the same paradigm societies as
diverse as Angola and Czechoslovakia.
In the remainder of this review, let me
substitute for this missing outsider, using as
a foundation my own anthropological
research in Eastern Europe (Romania). In
particular, I will ask the basic question: what
would an anthropology of socialism entail?
An anthropology of socialism
It would entail the study of concrete socialist
states as those whose political order is (was)
founded upon a moral vision. Socialist states
were established by party intellectuals,
ideological specialists who, like intellectuals
everywhere, had an enormous capacity for
self-deception (as is often noted, Pol Poťs
butchers arose out of Althusser's Paris).
What was the nature of their vision? What
made Marx and Marxism so easily applicable
to all societies at the level of ideology
and rhetoric?
Aside from Marxist ideology, each
socialist society was forced to evolve its
own national vision, expressed in the phrase
'specific historical and social conditions',
'African traditions', Titoism, 'the Albanian
road to socialism', etc. How did the practice
of 'building socialism' interact with these
utopian visions? An anthropology of
activist intellectuals, a group often discussed
by observers of communist affairs and
developing countries, is of the utmost
relevance here. A discussion of Latin
American Marxists, for example, would not
be out of place, either.
A second area of interest might be called
the historical archaeology of socialism.
What was the nature of the revolutions and
political takeovers which occurred in the
period known as 'class struggle'. We have
reports from participants, apologetics from
'winners', horror stories from victims, and
mythologized tales and legends about how
socialism was established. But we know
precious little about how class struggles and
brute force combined with other mechanisms
at local levels.
Museums of collaboration
We might continue this archaeology of
socialism by focusing on how 'totalitarian'
systems operated after consolidation of
power. How did these systems passify their
populations? What of the anthropology of informers,
of 'secreť police, of collaboration?
Fascinating memoirs are coming out by the
East German STASI functionaries. No system
operates on brute force alone. How did
people justify their behaviour when
contradictions arose? How did people learn
to separate public behavior and private
belief - the dissimulation so common to the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and apparently
China? How did parents teach their
kids to say what the party wanted at school
but to tell the truth at home? And why were
those people who tried to eliminate this
dualism, the dissidents, not just politically
repressed but socially isolated as well?
There are tales of courageous resistors and
brave dissidents. There are mythologies and
no doubt there will be founded museums of
resistance. But where do we find the
museum of collaboration?
Us and them
What of the social dynamics of socialist
systems? Most observers have emphasized
the dominance of the bureaucratic apparatus
and the resistance of informal networks: the
second economy, kinship, clans, friendship
and religion, and of personalism in general.
The interaction between 'us' and 'them',
the informal communication channels like
jokes and rumours, and the general
relationship between bureaucracy and
corruption, are all relevant here.
Anthropologists are conceptually and
methodologically well equipped to explore
the relationship between formal and informal
structures. Socialist systems - like any other
social system - persisted both because of
and in spite of interpersonal networks. All
too many analysts of the collapse of Eastern
Europe and now of Africa - including native
informants - have led us to believe that the
formal system was itself a fa~ade,an empty
shell; that informalism - be it underground
economy or corruption - was the reality.
In fact, the relationship between
bureaucratic states and informal structures
could vary according to the situation:
complementary in some contexts, parasitic
in others, and at still other times informal
ties helped bring down the formal system.
The same informal networks which
prevented these systems from changing also
helped bring them down: mineworkers and
dissident groups tended to mobilize on the
bases of family, friends and k!nship. 'Us'
and 'them' were social and political
categories.
An anthropology of socialism could also
be applied to socialist rituals and
symbolism; and today the rituals of reversal
in which monarchist statues of emperors on
horseback replace the hero worker and busts
of Lenin. Why not an anthropology of
personality cults, i.e., an anthropology of
institutionalized infallibility?
Our sources for socialist societies are rich
in 'native informants' who attempt to give
us their own analysis of 'how the system
really works'. Any Western social scientist
who has studied a socialist society has been
told, 'You'll never understand us'. Socialist
societies are full of disillusioned
ex-socialists, former members of the church
who attempt to expiate their sins by telling
all. Western societies are full of defectors
and refugees from socialism, people who
must justify why they left, and/or why they
didn't leave earlier. It is a classic syndrome
among East European refugees that the
groups who arrive earlier consider
themselves morally and politically superior
to subsequent waves of 'opportunists' or
even 'spies'.
Revolutions and post-communism
An anthropology of socialism must also
come to grips with societies in collapse and
in revolution. What were the 'revolutions of
1989' really like? What do systems look like
when they are 'falling aparť? How did
discontent grow into social movements, and
how did regimes full of secret police and
apparatus of repression collapse? Why were
the East European revolutions (and the
recent attempted Soviet counter-revolution)
so relatively non-violent? Why was the
security apparatus totally unaware of the
discontent or incapable of stifling it?
Finally, what is an anthropology of
post-communism like? A key problem is the
rewriting of history and the continuous
processes of finding scapegoats for the
problems caused by the transition. How is
legitimacy established in societies where so
many people were passive or collaborating,
and where everyone viewed the state as
something to be cheated? Mythologies are
being constructed about moral elites, about
'who resisted firsť. For example, in
Romania, the top of the moral hierarchy are
those few individuals who were dissidents
under the Ceausescu regime; below them are
those who protested the day he fell,
followed by those who fought in the revolt,
and finally, those now disillusioned by the
present regime. Each group considers the
subsequent adherents to be opportunists.
Similar scapegoating processes are going on
throughout Eastern Europe. Who decides to
release the 'lists of informers'? Who leaks
the information that a member of parliament
had worked for the old regime as informer?
Conspiracy theory has not disappeared. But
the conspirators are different. Theories about
who really controlled the attempted coup
against Gorbachev are but a recent
permutation of this. Of similar interest are
the recent reports of hundreds of anonymous
letters being sent to Russian official organs,
denouncing those who secretly supported the
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol7 No 5, October 118
coup. Back in Stalin's time, anonymous
denunciations were a means by which
individuals used the state as a weapon in
what were essentially interpersonal conflicts.
The content of the denunciation letter may
have changed, but denunciation as a tactic
seems to show that some things have not
changed in the new democratic era.
New political code words are now part of
the post-communist vocabulary. 'Re-entering
Europe', and being 'European' are daily fare
in the propaganda of even the most
peripheral of East European states.
'Democratization', 'human rights', 'civil
society' and 'privatization' have taken on
rhetorical and ideological functions
reminiscent of 'proletarian internationalism'
and 'progressive forces'. Even Mongolia's
new constitution has provisions on human
rights.
Boiling pot
The emergent ex-socialist states also establish
a new constellations of 'us' and 'them':
part of the old 'us' have now become
'them', while part of the old 'them' have become
entrepreneurs. Much of the hierarchical
us/them distinction has been transformed
into straightforward ethnic/national/regional
tensions. All too many analyses of the postcommunist
transformation have dwelled on
ethnic and national conflicts. Communism
is metaphorized as a lid which kept the 'boiling
poť of ethnicltribal tensions under control.
Such notions - the nostalgia of pax
Sovietica - recall the discussions about the
emergence of 'tribalism' in post-colonial
Africa. Many of the emergent ethnic conflicts
are direct consequences of the transition
to market economy and political
democracy, just as 'tribalism' was a creature
of newly emerging states.
We tend to envision the breakdown of the
USSR, Yugoslavia or Ethiopia as solely a
breakdown into more homogenous ethnic
units. We forget, of course, that each of
these smaller units is also ethnically
heterogeneous. Our focus on conflict hides
us from yet other enigmas. Why have ethnic
Russians in the Baltic states sided with the
colonized Balts against Moscow? Why were
Russians defending Lithuanian secession in
Vilnius? In the Baltic case. battle lines are
POSTMODERNISM, SOCIALIS
The 1991 ASA meeting, on the topic of
'Socialism', was just about right in its mixture
of intellectual commitment and fun. It
was only on the last day when we heard, in
discussion, yet another plaintive query a:ong
the lines of 'how do we do an anthropology
of socialism?' that something in me
snapped. I felt my eyes glaze over as my
thoughts tumed in trepidation to what might
now continue to fall on all our desks: paper
upon paper, soaked in tortured aspirations to
those elusive, unstaged realisms of beaming,
Californian, polyphonic, dialogical textuality.
But where, you might wonder, is the link?
being drawn not between ethnic groups, but
between 'democratic' and 'conservative'
forces. Why does ethnicity disappear here?
A second example of the complexity of
ethnicity is that of the FRGIGDR. The Wir
sind ein Folk rhetoric of a year ago has
given way to the Ossi/Wessi distinction.
Unification wiped out East Germany, but
created an East German consciousness.
Ethnic and national conflicts are but the
most manifest examples of so-called
'traditional legacies' which have plagued the
discussion of 'Comparative Communist
Societies'. There is a striking parallel here
with orthodox Marxism's explanation of
undesirable social phenomena as 'survivals'
A decade ago, students of 'political culture'
emphasized how pre-socialist characteristics
caused differences in the socialist states:
Czech democratic traditions, Balkan
mentalities, Polish religiosity, 'Russian
authoritarianism', Prussian work ethic,
Romanian passivity, the Ottoman legacy.
could all be invoked to explain the realities
of East European societies in the same way
that 'African traditions of cooperation' could
explain 'African Socialism'. Today the
tradition-bound explanations are of little use:
Bulgarians and Russians are proving to be
adept at democratic movements, and once
passive East Germans and Romanians made
revolutions. Some old traditions of
monarchy and ethnic chauvinism, even
Nazism in the old GDR, are being
resuscitated and manipulated.
Two sets of survivals
Yet an anthropology of post-socialist
societies has not only to deal with presocialist
traditions and legacies, but (as Skalnik
pointed out at the conference) an
altogether different set of 'survivals': the
40 year legacy of socialist political
economy, of interpersonal suspicions, of raising
children not to say what they mean, of
double life and dissimulation, of friendship
which was intense and utilitarian, and of
mistrust of all institutions connected with
the state. How does one generate legitimacy
in societies which operated on the premise
of 'he who does not rob the state robs his
family'?
The 'problem of tradition' will thus
M AND ETHNOGRAPHY
Well, an apparent decline of broadly
Marxian and socialist analyses of the world
seems already to have encouraged a number
of anthropologists, directly and indirectly,
into a mode of critique through lit. crit.
More than this, an apparent congruence now
of various populist and representational
angsts, in what some might term
postmodern anthropologies and post-socialist
politics, has a history in which socialism and
postmodemism are quite explicitly linked.
An anthropology that cannot confidently get
an ethnographic grasp on one is unlikely to
gain a handle on the other. And those
involve two kinds of returns: to the
pre-socialist and to the more recent socialist
traditions. The familiar Bulgarian refrain
'500 years under the Turkish yoke' is as
non-explanatory as invoking 'remnants of
socialist egalitarianism'. We must explain
why certain traditions are reproduced in new
conditions. Why, then, do cultures retum to
tradition? Why do Russians, to take one
example, have a resurgence in religion,
together with a wave of astrology, UFOs, a
monarchist fascination, and proto-Nazi
movements? Discussing such phenomena as
manifestation of 'change' or 'continuity'
provide little help.
Take the problem of friendship and
personal life generally in post-communist
societies. In more repressive states, with
their fear of informers, friendships were very
intense, if not conspiratorial. What happens
when the social utility of friendship is
suddenly reduced; when one can get meat at
the market instead of through contacts; when
one can articulate political ideas in
parliament instead of over a bottle of vodka
in a deserted summer house; when
friendship is emotional but not
conspiratorial?
Socialist societies are indeed disappearing
before our very eyes. Statues are being tom
down, constitutions rewritten, countries
renamed, parties abolished, flags redesigned,
alliances and identities reconstituted.
Marxist utopias may be passe, but new kinds
of utopian visions - and visionaries - are
springing up. Intellectuals with power dramatists
who are presidents - are not as
ruthless as the Bolshevik intellectuals, but
they resemble them in their breadth of
vision. There is room for an anthropology
of these visions, together with an
anthropology of 'survivals', both
pre-socialist and socialist.
We first begin to understand how social
structures really work only after they have
fallen apart. This may be the perfect
moment to begin an anthropology of
socialism.
Steven Sampson
(Copenhagen)
without a handle on self-conscious
'postmodemisms' are more likely to be
tempted, uncritically, into the persuasive
rhetoric of their self-defeating practices. It is
perhaps forgivable, therefore, if those who,
like myself, were already tired of Clifford
and Marcus's collection Writing Culture,
occasionally sought, at this ASA, a quick
exit.
Two brief points are offered here,
therefore, as a metaphorical footnote to
some of the ASA deliberations. Firstly, any
query along the lines of 'how can we do an
anthropology of socialism?' might seem
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol7 No 5, October 1991 19