Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hemment, Julie

Titel

Redefining need, reconfiguring expectations: the rise of state-run youth voluntarism programs in Russia/Redefininindo necessidades, reconfigurando expectativas: a Ascencao do voluntarismo nos programas de junventude do estado na Russia

Ist Teil von

• Anthropological quarterly, 2012-03, Vol.85 (2), p.519

Ort / Verlag

Institute for Ethnographic Research

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Project MUSE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This article investigates the restructuring of the Russian social welfare system by interrogating Putin-era state-run projects to promote youth voluntarism. Set up in the aftermath of liberalizing social welfare reform, these organizations are interesting hybrids: at the same time as they honor the Soviet past and afford symbolic prominence to Soviet era values, they simultaneously advance distinctively neoliberal technologies of self-help and self-reliance. In dialogue with recent studies in the anthropology of neoliberalism and the anthropology of postsocialism, I consider the implications of these intertwined logics. Focusing on the interpretive work undertaken by one provincial voluntary organization, I argue that it offers a symbolic salve and a measure of recompense to those most disaffected by neoliberal reform, while at the same time inculcating new models of subjectivity and citizenship. In so doing, it encodes a new vision of the common good that has interesting hybrid features and draws on the models that the Putin administration ostensibly disparages. [Keywords: Russia, anthropology of neoliberalism, youth, voluntarism, social welfare]