Experiencing post-socialism: Running and urban space in Sofia, Bulgaria

Abstract

This article suggests that cities in Central and Eastern Europe should be understood as developing and interacting with their own unique character and challenges in their own terms. In providing an account of embodied and everyday activities, this paper challenges the conception of a decline in public-oriented acts and affordances understood via the notion of post-socialist privatism. In doing so this paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork of recreational running, an underutilised tool for urban analysis. Despite the growing interest in recreational running amongst urban scholars, engaging with the practice has remained largely neglected within research on the post-socialist cities of Central and Eastern Europe. This paper uses a case study of two recreational running clubs from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, offering a discussion of everyday experience, public life and urban space. This case study combines participant observation and in-depth qualitative interviews with runners and club organisers to complicate the idea of post-socialist cities as places defined by the decline of public sensibilities and a single conception of the post-socialist condition.

Running Rotterdam: on how locals’ participation in running events fosters their sense of place

“…Moreover, given the increasing concern with aspects of performativity and mobility, researchers have increasingly used their bodies as instruments of research (Duffy et al 2011) to 'move along' in an attempt to (better) engage with the running subject(s) under study (e.g. Barnfield 2017;Hitchings and Latham 2016). Others, however, have cautioned not to exaggerate the power of mobile methods at the expense of 'conventional' ones, arguing that rather than overprioritizing the former, one should productively combine them with the latter (Merriman 2014).…”

“…However, a larger share of the ever-expanding literature on running (events) has taken a more bottom-up perspective and has variously highlighted aspects of sociability (Sheehan 2006;Shipway et al 2012;Robinson et al 2014;Hitchings and Latham 2017a), mobility (Cidell 2014), and-in some cases relying on autoethnographic insights (e.g. Allen-Collinson 2003;Hockey 2006;Lorimer 2012;Barnfield 2017)-has discussed running in terms of (individual and collective) embodied experiences (e.g. Cook et al 2016;Lorimer 2012;Edensor and Larsen 2018).…”

Three Metals and the ‘Post‐Socialist City’: Reclaiming the Peripheries of Urban Knowledge

“…Even so, the resilience and durability of post‐socialism are remarkable, considering that state socialism is now almost 30 years behind us. In a recent article, for example, we learn that runners in Sofia, Bulgaria, are effectively ‘experiencing post‐socialism’ (Barnfield, ), albeit a very complex and multifaceted version of it.…”

“…In view of the above, my suggestion is to drop the post‐ and regional attributes altogether, unless their presence has a particular and indispensable meaning (which is rarely the case). This means that we should avoid speaking about ‘experiencing post‐socialism’ while running in Sofia (to take the example used earlier) when in fact what's being experienced are heavy traffic, pollution, crowded sidewalks, ‘privatism’ and other common urban ailments (Barnfield, ). Likewise we should avoid looking for specifically post‐socialist expressions of gentrification, unless we are able to demonstrate that there is something crucial in the local ‘post‐socialist’ context that is shared by other ‘post‐socialist’ locales, while being absent elsewhere.…”

Post‐socialist (auto)mobilities: Modernity, freedom and citizenship

“…Private cars offered “personal freedom in seeming non‐dependence on the state” compared to public transit's “imposed from above” character (Broz & Habeck, , p. 10). Yet, not only are there various forms of emerging publics through cycling or running (Barnfield, ; Barnfield & Plyushteva, ) but equating private automobiles with freedom from the state is itself a simplification (Beckmann, ). Rather than a dichotomy between controlled public transit users and free car drivers, there are different forms of mobile‐citizenships, with different governing aims and modes of regulations.…”