Beschreibung
“… anthropology needs a broader vision. It needs to
shake off its strong association with the primitive and
the exotic and become genuinely global in its comparisons. From this perspective, more sustained attention
to Eurasia and a renewed focus on its underlying unity might launch the transformation of our parochial
scholarly traditions into a mature cosmopolitan science.” – Chris Hann, in his Preface to this series
This is an age of neo-liberalism, in which the advantages
and virtues of private property are often taken for granted.
Postsocialist governments have privatized and broken up
state farms and socialist cooperatives. However, economic
outcomes and the social insecurity now experienced by many
rural inhabitants highlight the need for a broader
anthropological analysis of property relations, which goes
beyond changes in legal form. A century after Kautsky
addressed ‘The Agrarian Question’ in Germany, it is
therefore necessary to address a postsocialist Agrarian
Question throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the former
Soviet Union and China. The studies collected here derive from the first cycle of
projects at the Max Planck Institute for Social
Anthropology. They are prefaced by a substantial
Introduction by Chris Hann, a Founding Director of the
Institute.
Contributors: Susanne Brandtstädter, Andrew Cartwright, Barbara A.
Cellarius, John Eidson, Patty A. Gray, Chris Hann, Patrick Heady,
Deema Kaneff, Alexander D. King, Carolin Leutloff, Liesl L.
Gambold Miller, Gordon Milligan, Mihály Sárkány, Florian
Stammler, Wolde Gossa Tadesse, Davide Torsello, Aimar Ventsel,
Lale Yalçn-Heckmann, John P. Ziker
