Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Phillips, Sarah Drue

Titel

“Civil” societies and “evil” states: Ambiguities of women's NGO organizing and patriarchy in post -Soviet Ukraine

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2002

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this dissertation, I analyze popular, political, and academic engagement of the construct “civil society” in the postsocialist context by examining ten non-governmental organizations (NGOs) led by women in Ukraine. By analyzing the women's narratives and organizing strategies, I show how various models of “civil society” that are propagated by scholars, politicians, and agents of international development fail to address the realities that postsocialist citizens experience during the so-called “transition” from state socialism to a democratic state. The dissertation examines the many challenges facing women in Ukraine in the post-Soviet period. I also examine the personal transformations that civic activism can engender for women by showing how the activists I knew negotiated a variety of discourses to change their location in society and thus change themselves. By examining the range of “voices” in the so-called “third sector,” my dissertation shows how the contradictory narratives that are negotiated and mobilized by women social activists lead to contradictory effects on their organizational activities and their lives. In the dissertation I also examine “development” in the postsocialist context, considering problems such as corruption; competition for funding between local groups; NGO development strategies that do not address the needs of local people; and the “feminization” of the NGO sphere as a low-prestige niche for women. This work articulates to ongoing studies of civil society and social organizations that examine the range of informal interpersonal practices that configure new social orders in post-Soviet countries. My dissertation adds to studies of local organizational practices, transnational interventions, and the production and consumption of discourses while contributing to cross-cultural studies of institution building and “civil society” in post-socialism that bridge the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, history, and political science. My dissertation contributes to work on post-socialist civil societies by providing ethnographic details of the complex social forces—particularly gender, class, and social networks—that shape the self-organization of society in a specific post-Soviet setting.