Post-Yugoslav Everyday Activism(s): A Different Form of Activist Citizenship?

Goldstein, Piotr

doi:10.1080/09668136.2017.1385728

Cited by 17 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Rather than either-or, urban movements typically are both-and, multifunctional in nature, at once oriented toward practical problemsolving and opposed to the present order and current practices (e.g., Jacobsson 2015). As Goldstein (2017) showed, arenas and activities that were labeled non-political-such as bookshop cafés with multi-lingual and hard-to-sell books, and the organization of recreational activities such as free yoga classes-turned out to be ways by which citizens were "practicing citizenship." They did so by forming pluralistic spaces that countered nationalist discourses as well as the commodification of public space in the post-Yugoslav context.…”

Section: Lesson 2: Challenging the (Narrow) Understanding Of The Polimentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobilizing Grassroots in the City: Lessons for Civil Society Research in Central and Eastern Europe

Jacobsson

Korolczuk

2019

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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What can we learn about civil society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Russia from studies on activism within the region's urban spaces? In this article, we argue that studying urban activism in CEE offers useful insights for general theory building about the importance of uneventful protests, the formation of agency and the processes of becoming active in the public sphere (conceptualized here as "political becoming"), and the enabling role of informality in collective action in adverse contexts. By contributing to our understanding in this way, these insights help to advance relational and process-based conceptions of civil society.

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Section: Lesson 2: Challenging the (Narrow) Understanding Of The Polimentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobilizing Grassroots in the City: Lessons for Civil Society Research in Central and Eastern Europe

Jacobsson

Korolczuk

2019

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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“…Why should resistance and struggle against something perceived as threatening to one's existence (such as the dacha gardens in this case) be anything other than a highly rational, legitimate, and political motive? Scholars have found that in many cases that initially looked like self-help groups concerned with their own wellbeing, the activists were actually practicing citizenship, engaging in "the politics of small things" (Goldfarb, 2006), and forming pluralistic spaces (Goldstein, 2017). Leipnik (2015, p. 86ff) has explored in Ukraine further examples of collective efficacy and control among dacha gardeners who self-organize and successfully coordinate logistics around volunteers guarding their dacha cooperatives in the off-season for crime.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…They conclude that a "reassessment of post-socialist civil society is needed on both empirical and theoretical grounds" (Jacobsson and Korolczuk, 2020, p. 126). Císaȓ (2013a,b) and Goldstein (2017) have argued that invisible struggles, "everyday discrete activism", or "self-organized civic activism" are not only common but also highly rational in contexts where other forms of activism are ideologically or politically problematic, risky, or ineffective. Such "infrapolitics" (Scott, 1985) or "politics of small things" (Goldfarb, 2006) are less radical, more mundane and in many cases more likely to be organized in informal, spontaneous and fluid networks.…”

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confidence: 99%

Dachas and food democracy—What makes a (good) food citizen?

Pungas

2023

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Against the backdrop of multiple crises within—and due to—the current industrial agri-food system, food is a highly political issue. As calls for food sovereignty grow louder and the war in Ukraine exposes the fragility of global food systems, the concept of food democracy calls on all (food) citizens to engage in a democratic and collective struggle for socially just and environmentally friendly food systems. To date, “Western” examples of food democracy and formal political procedures of civil society have dominated scholarship, ignoring the self-organized, low-key, and informal political activities around food in the post-socialist East. In this article, we shed light on the aspects of food democracy within Food Self-Provisioning (FSP) practices in Eastern Estonia, which is our case study. Our empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019–2021 with 27 gardeners on their so-called dachas—a Russian term for a plot of land with a seasonal allotment house used primarily for food production. The analysis focuses on the food-, farming-, and nutrition-related attitudes and practices of the gardeners, as well as the multitude of collective endeavors to improve food systems. Despite the precarious socio-economic and political status of the gardeners, we identified a variety of subtle, informal, and mundane forms of democratic practices and everyday resistance. We investigate the interplay of these aspects along the three dimensions of food democracy (input, throughput, output). On the one hand, FSP on Eastern Estonian dachas encompasses essential characteristics of the mainly “Western” concept of food democracy, allowing access to and participation in agricultural production while preserving (re)productive nature in the future. On the other hand, we caution against excessive optimism and romanticization of such local food communities, as they tend to remain exceptions and risk extinction or displacement if they are not valorized and reshaped through public discourse. We conclude with a plea for building and strengthening alliances between the marginalized elderly rural food producers and the more youthful urban food activists to achieve more democratic, just, and ecologically sound food systems.

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“…The potential of these political squats 'lies not in their ability to turn things upside down in an instant' (Tonkiss, 2005, p. 64), but in advancing the idea of a 'self-changing society' able to directly intervene on some of its core problems 'by means of the very action itself' (Bosi & Zamponi, 2015, p. 369). By 'creating alternative realities, standing in opposition to commodification of public space and to populism, nationalism, or xenophobia', political squats constitute activism on their own and 'not merely a "preamble" to a "more real" activism' (Goldstein, 2017(Goldstein, , p. 1469. And it is in the premises of these political squats that we find the community gyms investigated in this article.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting gentrification from the boxing ring: how community gyms reclaim the right to the city

Milan

2020

Social Movement Studies

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This article explores 'community gyms' as prefigurative counter spaces where sport is experienced as a political practice. Emerging in the framework of political squats in Italy and beyond, community gyms constitute an integral part of today's right to the city mobilization, with two unique contributions. Firstly, they reclaim the right to leisure space as a fundamental component of the struggle against gentrification. Secondly, they introduce to a critical approach to urban development also individuals who would otherwise not embrace anti-systemic politics. Specifically, the article analyses the spatial dimension of community gyms. It exposes how they constitute a bulwark against the commodification and gentrification of the urban habitat, recovering vacant or abandoned buildings to return them to the locals and embodying an alternative model of urban development centered on people rather than profit. The article also explores the gyms' relational dimension, showing how community gyms nurture novel relationships of care, in three ways: they include and give agency to marginalized subjects, they forge militants through sport practice, and seek to mitigate the socioeconomic needs of their social surroundings. In so doing, the article shows that leisure, too, can create moments of disruption able to generate change, and that sport, when understood as a political act, can unsettle the capitalist logic of commodification of leisure. Inspired by a carnal sociology approach to social research, this article is based on original data gathered by means of in-depth interviewing, ethnographic observation and document analysis.

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Post-Yugoslav Everyday Activism(s): A Different Form of Activist Citizenship?

Cited by 17 publications

References 17 publications

Mobilizing Grassroots in the City: Lessons for Civil Society Research in Central and Eastern Europe

Mobilizing Grassroots in the City: Lessons for Civil Society Research in Central and Eastern Europe

Dachas and food democracy—What makes a (good) food citizen?

Fighting gentrification from the boxing ring: how community gyms reclaim the right to the city

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