Abstract

Over the last two decades, Eastern Europe has experienced extensive changes in geo-political relocations and relations leading to everyday uncertainty. Attempts to establish liberal democracies, re-orientations from planned to market economics, and a desire to create ‘new states’ and internationally minded ‘new citizens’ has left some in poverty, unemployment and social insecurity, leading them to rely on normative coping and semi-autonomous strategies for security and social guarantees. This anthology explores how grey zones of governance, borders, relations and invisibilities affect contemporary Eastern Europe.

‘This is an excellent contribution for understanding the ambiguities of the ordinary which is otherwise addressed as the informal or transitory. Through using the concept of the grey zone as an analytical and reflexive tool, relations, borders and invisibilities are explored ethnographically. Highly recommended to all scholars of Eastern Europe and beyond.’ —Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany

‘Comprehensively, timely and audacious. This book offers a cutting-edge analysis of ambiguities in relations, borders and daily existence in Eastern Europe. It shows that liberalization and Europeanization are perennial quests not only for elites but also for the public.’ —Umut Korkut, Glasgow Caledonian University

Over the last two decades, Eastern Europe has experienced extensive changes in geo-political relocations and relations. Attempts to establish liberal democracies, re-orientations from planned to market economics, and a desire to create ‘new states’ and internationally minded ‘new citizens’ has left some in poverty, unemployment and social insecurity, leading them to rely on normative coping and semi-autonomous strategies for security and social guarantees. Such processes testify to a paradoxical situation between the political attempts to create well-functioning, modern civil societies, and the reliance on normative laws on the margins of society.

This anthology explores aspects of everyday uncertainty, which are defined as ‘grey zones’. Within anthropology, grey zones have been conceived of in relation to political corruption and zones of ambiguity related to violence. Yet, the authors propose to expand the term to include situations where uncertainty and ambiguity have become part and parcel of everyday life and where the indefinable defines the situation. This book views these various grey zones not merely as legacies of socialism but as something in and of themselves; thus it deploys the notion of grey zones in order to find new ways of approaching and conceptualizing current situations in Eastern Europe, ways that are not preconfigured in terms of post-socialism or transition.

‘This is an excellent contribution for understanding the ambiguities of the ordinary which is otherwise addressed as the informal or transitory. Through using the concept of the grey zone as an analytical and reflexive tool, relations, borders and invisibilities are explored ethnographically. Highly recommended to all scholars of Eastern Europe and beyond.’ —Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany

'The most interesting and original part of the book’s arc is that EU membership (and its future possibility) remains a shadowy and incomplete grey zone—whether this relates to transition to market, law-based, citizenship and property “norms,” or geographical integrity'. — Jeremy Morris, University of Birmingham

Ida Harboe Knudsen is a Lecturer at the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Martin Demant Frederiksen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.

‘Comprehensively, timely and audacious. This book offers a cutting-edge analysis of ambiguities in relations, borders and daily existence in Eastern Europe. It shows that liberalization and Europeanization are perennial quests not only for elites but also for the public.’ —Umut Korkut, Glasgow Caledonian University