Nancy Ries, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University
Thursday, September 25, 2008, 12 - 1 p.m., The Annenberg School, 3620 Walnut St. in Room 500 (5th Floor)
"Potato Ontology: Surviving Postsocialism in Russia"
Narratives and practices of everyday survival reveal much about both political and symbolic economies in Russia and other former Soviet communities. Many people talk about "living on potato," and this paper argues that they use potato to depict and theorize the valor of self-sufficiency, the retraction of the state after socialism, and their sense of radical disconnection from global commodity production and circulation.
Turkish Armenia: See Dr. Holquist's current book project By Right of War, that investigates the conduct of
the Russian army in Turkish Armenia during WWI.
Austrian Galica: See Dr. Holquist's current book project By Right of War, that investigates the conduct of
the Russian army in Galicia during WWI.
St. Petersburg Russia, Capital of the Russian Empire: See Dr. Holquist's book Making War, Forging Revolution:
Russia 's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921.
Chernobyl, Ukraine: Dr. Petrynas first book, Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl describes
the vexed scientific and social circumstances that followed the Chernobyl disaster.
Kazan, Russia: Formerly the seat of the Khanate of Kazan, the city was conquered in 1552 by Ivan the Terrible.
See Dr. Platt's current book project Terrible and Great: Ivan IV and Peter I, as Russian Myths.
Samara, Russia: Professor Yakubovich's study explores the role of formal institutions and
informal networks in shaping the local labor market in the late 1990s.
