Formal Crutches for Broken Sociality

Post-socialism as an experience of distancing and dispossession in rural and transnational Estonia

“…In earlier work I proposed conveying the nature and meaning of such social deterioration with the term 'social dispossession' (Annist, 2014(Annist, , 2015. Originally deriving from the field of political economy, David Harvey's (2004) concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' refers to the processes of transferring wealth from public to private ownership, and the gains made by the wealthier, more successful sectors that have come at the cost of losses for the general public, and the more hard-pressed groups in particular.…”

“…In fact, it is social dispossession in particular that plays a major role in deepening, or even bringing about economic dispossession, stratification and poverty in Estonia and other rapidly neoliberalized contexts. Moreover, it has also reinforced the negation of any potential positive effects of redistributive structures (Annist, 2011(Annist, , 2015. Social dispossession surfaces as one of the most fundamental harms populations endured through the post-socialist years of the rapid advance of neoliberal practices and discourses.…”

“…The severity and speed of change led to the abrupt and thorough loss of various social linkages, resources, networks and safety nets as the economic reforms unfolded. As the reality of inequalities, ‘exchange asymmetries’ (Narotzky, 2019: 103), new hierarchies and their links with neoliberal global processes transpired (see Annist, 2011; Kalb, 2000, 2019), the eroding effects of such inequalities on sociality have also become clearer. At the same time, the conceptualization of those effects continues to deserve further honing.…”

“…Already by the early 2000s, a lack of sharing was clearly evident in Estonian centralized villages – Soviet remnants with large urban block houses in the middle of the countryside, originally built to provide labour for the large cooperative or state farms. As I have depicted in detail elsewhere (Annist, 2011, 2014, 2015), in their daily lives people often went to considerable lengths to avoid contact and communication with others and sought anonymity, for example in local market relations. Many emphasized their ‘urban’ lack of interest in others.…”