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Large corporations are often formidable and mysterious to people outside them, like giants that populate the earth but can only be seen through their shadows." 2 This is what Rosabeth Moss Kanter remarked in her book Men and Women of the Corporation and she continued as follows: "Corporations are often equally mysterious to the people inside, whose views can be limited and parochial because they rarely get a sense of the whole." 3 This sentence, I assume, still holds true-not only for corporations but also particularly for international organizations like the United Nations (UN) and its agencies. In my research, I seek to shed light on this large international organization focusing especially on its employees. With a look behind the scenes, I aim to better understand the dynamics and work culture(s) in this rather closed-off terra incognita of the United Nations and the practices of men and women working there. 4 Newcomers to the United Nations-introduction This paper deals with the United Nations system 5 as a work and lifeworld. It sets out to explore how early career professionals enter the international organization, how they cope with its hierarchical organizational culture and how they eventually adjust to the United Nations system as a work environment. 1 This paper is based on my SNSF funded research project (working title: "Rituals in an International Work Environment. An Anthropological Research on Cross-cultural Relations and Interactions in United Nations Affiliated Organizations in Geneva and Vienna"). 2 Kanter, Rosabeth M.: Men and Women of the Corporation, New York 1977, p. 4. 3 Kanter, Men, p. 4. 4 Based on Clifford Geertz, I understand "culture" as a human-crated "web of significance". In consequence, being part of an organization means to (re-)create a specific work culture and organizational culture. Geertz, Clifford: The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz, New York 1973, p. 5. 5 Referring to the UN as a 'system' is based on its self-imposed term: "The UN system, also known unofficially as the 'UN family' , is made up of the UN itself and many affiliated programmes, funds, and specialized agencies, all with their own membership, leadership, and budget.

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Review Essay: An Ethnography of Pastness Identity Playgrounds and Battlefields in Post-Post-Soviet Estonia. Francisco Martínez (2018), Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia: An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces (London: UCL Press), 259 pp., Pbk £22.99. ISBN 9781787353541, Hbk £45.00. ISBN 9781787353558.Diarmuid Ó Giolláin (ed.) (2017), Irish Ethnologies (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), 238 pp. 238, $40.00, ISBN 9780268102371.Larisa Jašarević (2017), Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 282 pp., Pbk $35.00, ISBN 9780253023827.Paweł Michał Lewicki (2017), EU-Space and the Euroclass: Modernity, Nationality and Lifestyle among Eurocrats in Brussels (Culture and Social Practice) (Bielefeld: Transcript), 328 pp., Paperback €39.99, ISBN: 9783839439746.Dorothy Noyes (2016), Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press), 459 pp., $35, ISBN 9780253022912.Matthäus Rest and Gertraud Seiser (eds) (2016), Wild und Schön: Der Krampus im Salzburger Land (Wien: LIT Verlag).C. Nadia Seremetakis (2019), Sensing the Everyday: Dialogues from Austerity Greece (Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge), 250 pp., $35.96, ISBN 9780367187767.

Wie gestalten sich die Arbeits- und Lebenswelten von jungen UNO-Beschäftigten in Zeiten des Postfordismus? Ausgehend von der Perspektive junger Beschäftigter an den UNO-Standorten in Genf und Wien befasst sich das Buch mit der zunehmenden Flexibilisierung und Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit. Die Studie legt ein besonderes Augenmerk auf mikrostrukturelle Machtpraktiken und die individuelle Agency. Sie zeigt, wie UNO-Beschäftigte ihre persönlichen Erzählungen mit dem in den vergangenen Jahren und Jahrzehnten kreierten Organisationsbild in Einklang bringen, und in welchem Wechselspiel die prekären Beschäftigungsverhältnisse mit einem moralischen Überlegenheitsgefühl stehen. Dabei wird deutlich, dass diese Entwicklungen keinen Widerspruch darstellen, sondern zwei Seiten derselben Medaille sind. Das Buch zeigt am Beispiel der UNO auf, wie flexible Beschäftigungsverhältnisse in Zeiten des kognitiv- und affektbasierten Kapitalismus auf Biographien wirken. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/