Strategies for Comparative Urbanism: Post‐socialism as a De‐territorialized Concept

Abstract

The aim of this article is to critically assess the study of post-socialist cities with respect to comparative urbanism. Even though comparative urbanism has challenged the division of the world into largely incommensurable regional containers, where some regions are sources of theory while others remain in the periphery of thinking, post-socialist cities have remained doubly excluded: neither centre nor periphery, neither mainstream nor part of the critique. This article introduces three ways in which post-socialism has and could be perceived: as a container, as a condition and as a de-territorialized concept. It is argued here that seeing post-socialism as a de-territorialized concept that would apply to particular aspects of cities and societies rather than territorialized units in general would allow cities regularly seen as post-socialist to be incorporated into global urban theorizing, while distinctive local histories and experiences still remain analytically present. The arti cle cautions researchers against area-based imaginations of urban theorization, instead arguing in favour of an approach that sees cities first and foremost as ordinary while some aspects could be claimed to be post-socialist. Tallinn is used here as a site from which to draw examples for this mainly literature-based conceptual analysis.

Zombie socialism and the rise of neoliberalism in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe

“…After ascending as a denominator of all things post-1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, several scholars in geography, anthropology, and sociology have pointed out that the concept of post-socialism has become less relevant (Boyer and Yurchak 2008;Cervinkova 2012;Chari and Verdery 2009;Dunn and Verdery 2015;Ferenčuhová 2016;Hirt 2013;Horvat and Štiks 2012;Humphrey 2001;Pickles 2010;Rogers 2010;Stenning and Hörschelmann 2008;Tuvikene 2016;Wiest 2012). Against this backdrop, we indicate one location where one may find continued relevance of socialism (and its "post").…”

“…Third, we wonder what the chances are that the concept of post-socialism (understood differently than a temporal container that is replaceable with other temporal delineators) will travel to other geographical areas (Tuvikene 2016). Although we, like others, are sympathetic to this possibility, there is little evidence of that happening (Pitcher and Askew 2006, 2, 3).…”

“…Aside from becoming a weaker spatial container, post-socialism has also ceased to be a temporal container or recognizable condition (Boyer and Yurchak 2008;Dunn and Verdery 2015;Ferenčuhová 2016;Horvat and Štiks 2012;Humphrey 2001;Rogers 2010;Tuvikene 2016). Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Katherine Verdery -two scholars closely associated with the ascent of the concept of post-socialism -observed recently that "after all, no one now refers to western Europe as 'post-feudal'" (Dunn and Verdery 2015, 1).…”

Policy mobilities as comparison: urbanization processes, repeated instances, topologies

“…Various commentators have sought to bring these, perhaps twicesidelined cities (once by western-oriented urban studies, once by a post-colonial critique focused on "global South", China, and poorer country contexts) into analytical relationship. Part of the difficulty has been the territorialized imagination of "post-socialism" as a container, a demarcated regional "other" (Tuvikene, 2016). Here, tracing the many lines of connection which tie emergent dynamics of urbanization in this region to global trends -such as those of property investment, urban design, economic flows, borrowing from valued political systems (Hirt, 2012;Gentile, 2018) has the effect of de-territorializing post-socialism, and offering this as a concept which might be put to work in articulating the after-lives of socialism, as well as multiple lines or new potentialities which emerge in continuity or opposition with socialist pasts, highly varied across this putative region (Tuvikene, 2016).…”

Locked-in post-socialism: rolling path dependencies in Liberec’s district heating system

“…Understanding the intrinsic nature of these shared features has often required focusing onto the geographical specificities of "post-socialist difference" (Sjöberg 2014). however, it has been argued that a spatial emphasis on the defining characteristics of transforming CEE and FSU cities limits the ability of post-socialist urban studies to engage with wider theoretical paradigms while relegating analyses and conceptualizations of systemic change in the region to the domain of area studies (Ferenčuhová 2016;Moore 2001;Tuvikene 2016). While constraints on space do not allow for a wider engagement with such debates within the confines of this contribution, we would emphasize that they have often neglected the temporal dimension of political and material reconfigurations associated with post-socialist urban reconfigurations.…”