From Parent-state to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe

East European Politics & Societies

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 1994, Pages 225-255

  Verdery, Katherine ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84977045663     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: 15338371     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325494008002002     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. R. W. Connell, “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics,” Theory and Society 19 (1990), pp. 523–526.
2. I owe this point to Mary Poovey. See also Eve Kosowsky Sedgwick, “Nationalisms and Sexuali-ties in the Age of Wilde,” in Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992), p. 239.
3. Eric R. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 18–20.
4. Consider the following: “Workers of Romanian, Hungarian, German, and other nationalities comprise together the great family of socialist Romania” (from an article significantly entitled “The Socialist Nation” {Natiunea socialista], in Documente ale Partidului Comunist Roman: Culegere sintetica (Bucharest, 1972), p. 106. I am grateful to Gail Kligman for this reference.
5. See, for example, the introduction to Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias, Woman–Nation– State (New York, 1989).
6. This is nicely illustrated in George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison, 1985).
7. See also John Higham, “Indian Princess and Roman Goddess: The First Female Symbols of America,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 100 (1990).
8. See, e.g., Ann L. Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-century Colonial Cultures,” American Ethnologist 16 (1989)
9. Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India,” American Ethnologist 16 (1989). A wonderful example of this point is E. M. Forster's celebrated novel, A Passage to India.
10. See Katherine Verdery, “Theorizing Socialism: A Prologue to the ‘Transition,’” American Ethnologist 18 (1991), and National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991).
11. See, Inter alia, Irene Dolling, “ ‘We Now Live from Day to Day, Because Nothing Is Certain Anymore’: On Changes in the Daily Lives of Women in the New ‘Lander’” (Unpublished manuscript, 1991)
12. Joanna Goven, “Gender Politics in Hungary: Autonomy and Anti-feminism,” in Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, eds., Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (New York, 1993)
13. The Gendered foundations of Hungarian Socialism: State, Society, and the Anti-Politics of Anti-Feminism, 1949–1990 (Ph.D. dissertation in Political Science, Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1993)
14. A. Heitlinger, Women and State Socialism: Sex Inequality in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia (London, 1979)
15. Gail Kligman, The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988)
16. “Women and the State: Ceauşescu's Pro-natalist Policies” (Paper prepared for Wenner-Gren Symposium on The Politics of Reproduction, Brazil, 1991)
17. “The Politics of Reproduction in Ceau§escu's Romania: A Case Study in Political Culture,” East European Politics and Societies 6 (1992)
18. Maxine Molyneux, “The ‘Woman Question’ in the Age of Perestroika,” in Robin Blackburn, ed., After the Fall (London, 1991)
19. Dorothy Rosenberg, “Shock Therapy: GDR Women in Transition from a Socialist Welfare State to a Social Market Economy,” Signs 17 (1991).
20. See George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York, 1979), pp. 47–52.
21. Cited in Mikhail Heller and A. M. Nekrich, Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present (New York, 1986).
22. See Kligman, “Politics of Reproduction,” p. 374, n. 24. Kligman also reports a joke that the elderly came to be called “Falcons of the market” (soimii pietii), in a wonderful pun on the name of the Communist children's organization (“falcons of the homeland,” soimii patriei).
23. Kligman, “Politics of Reproduction,” pp. 386–95, discusses at length how doctors were enlisted in policing natality.
24. Quoted in Charlotte Hord, Henry P. David, France Donnay, and Merrill Wolf, “Reproductive Health in Romania: Reversing the Ceau§escu Legacy,” IP AS Reports 22 (July/August 1991), p. 232. The quotation continues, “Giving birth is a patriotic duty…. Those who refuse to have children are deserters.”
25. Rosenberg, “Shock Therapy,” p. 147.
26. Julia Szalai, “Some Aspects of the Changing Situation of Women in Hungary,” Signs 17 (1991), p. 161.
27. For an excellent description of gender “homogenization,” see Joanna Goven, Gendered Foundations, chapter 2.
28. See also Kligman, “Politics of Reproduction,” pp. 366–369.
29. For a discussion of homogenization in relation to ethnic groups, see, e.g., Michael Stewart, “Gypsies, the Work Ethic, and Hungarian Socialism,” in C. M. Hann, ed., Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and Local Practice (London, 1993).
30. Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai, The Dissolution of Communist Power: The Case of Hungary (New York, 1992), esp. pp. 54–56, 137–38.
31. Kligman, “Women,” p. 5.
32. Nicolae Ceau§escu, Speech at the National Women's Conference, 7–8 March 1985, Femeia 38 (1985), pp. 5–7.
33. Susan Gal, “Questions about Women and Gender after Socialism: The Abortion Debate in Hungary” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 1991), p- 2. More extended information is found in Goven, Gendered Foundations, chapter 5.
34. Szalai, “Aspects,” p. 155.
35. Victor Craciun, “Chipul luminos al mamei, un mare model al literaturii române” Sctnteia, February 20, 1986. (This is being said in the main Party daily.)
36. Decision of the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, June 18–19, 1973. Brochure, pp. 27–30.
37. See, e.g., telegram addressed to Nicolae Ceauşescu by participants in the National Women's Conference, 7–8 March 1985, in Femeia 38 (1985), pp. 8–9.
38. The article was signed by Silviu Achim. Sctnteia, September 18, 1986, p. 4.
39. The observation about patriarchy is Gail Kligman's. I note, however, that this historian is in good company: Hegel is reported to have said, “He who is not a father is not a man” (cited in Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992], p. 43).
40. This outcome is similar to that analyzed by Jane Collier for contemporary Andalusia, but the mechanisms producing it are somewhat different. See her “Bullfights and Sevillanas: Gendered ‘Traditions’ Engendering Nationalism.” (Paper presented at the Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, Charleston, S.C., 1991)
41. Adrian Marino, “Great Figures in the History of Romanian Genius,” The Times (London), special supplement, December 29, 1972.
42. I take this expression from Richard Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison, 1988).
43. See Carole Pateman, “The Fraternal Social Contract,” in John Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State (London, 1988), p. 114. Original emphasis.
44. Connell, “The State,” p. 526.
45. See, e.g., E. M. Simmonds-Duke [Katherine Verdery], “Was the Peasant Uprising a Revolution? The Meanings of a Struggle over the Past,” Eastern European Politics and Societies 1 (1987): 187–224.
46. From Ion Lăncrănjan, Cuvînt despre Transilvania (Bucharest, 1982), pp. 69–71, 81–84.
47. Eva Huseby-Darvas, “‘Feminism, the Murderer of Mothers’: Neo-natalist Reconstruction of Gender in Hungary.” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 1991), pp. 3–4.
48. Kligman, “Politics of Reproduction,” p. 400. As of this writing (May 1993), the Romanian parliament was considering a law that would reintroduce the celibacy tax on childless persons and reduce the length of maternity leaves.
49. See Gal, “Questions,” Goven, “Gender Politics,” and Huseby-Darvas, “ ‘Feminism,’” on Hungary; Ewa Hauser, “Politics of Feminism in Poland” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 1991), on Poland
50. Olga Supek, “ ‘The Unborn Are Also Croats’” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 1991), on Croatia.
51. Huseby-Darvas, “‘Feminism,’” p. 1.
52. Supek, “The Unborn,” and Hauser, “Politics,” (which also reports Polish feminists’ counter-slogan: “Onanism is genocide”).
53. Hauser, “Politics,” p. 4
54. Huseby-Darvas, “ ‘Feminism,’ ” pp. 4–5.
55. Supek, “The Unborn,” pp. 2–4.
56. Gal, “Questions,” p. 7;
57. Huseby-Darvas, “‘Feminism,’” p. 5.
58. Huseby-Darvas, “ ‘Feminism,’ ” p. 6.
59. Goven (“Gender Politics,” p. 232) quotes the following statement from a magazine article: “Society [i.e., socialism] liberates the woman from family shackles, gives her economic independence, spares her many of the burdens of child-rearing, and in exchange asks for an alliance in crushing male obstinacy. The women take on their part in the alliance with their usual violent moods and aggressiveness.”
60. Gal, “Questions,” p. 6.
61. Goven, “Gender Politics,” p. 234.
62. Cited in Goven, “Gender Politics,” p. 229.
63. See, e.g., Fran Markowitz, “Striving for Femininity: Soviet Unfeminism.” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 1991), p. 7.
64. Rosenberg observes that in the March 1990 elections, 46% of East German women voted for a party that opposed abortion, day care, and the equivalent of affirmative action (“Shock Therapy,” p. 146).
65. See, e.g., Immanuel Wallerstein, “Household Structures and Labour-Force Formation in the Capitalist World-Economy,” in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (New York, 1991), pp. 107–112.
66. As Folbre shows, the “un-produc-tive” character of housework was a 19th-century development (Nancy Folbre, “The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought” Signs 16 [1991], pp. 463–84).