PhD defense of Aniko Horvath
Dissertation Examination Committee:
Chair: Andras Kovacs, Professor at the Department of Nationalism Studies, CEU
Supervisor: Daniel Monterescu, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, CEU
Internal Examiner: Michael Stewart, Professor at the Department of Nationalism Studies, CEU
External Examiner: Frances Pine, Reader at the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London
Abstract:
The thesis takes an ethnographic approach to examine the lives of people and families that have, for decades, faced precarious livelihoods and impoverishment in urban Romania. It is an exploration of processes that determined the social (re)production of inequalities and brought about social change under successive government regimes prior to, during, and after Communism. To this end, it is also an historical account of the ways in which successive generations of individual families have been and are being affected by the political and economic changes over the past decades, and the ways in which they mobilized their resources attempting to create more secure lives.
Through the lens of how struggles for housing and land conditioned the lives of families, and brought about or eased poverty over time, the thesis examines the ways in which families have been able to create or seize ‘openings’ in structures of power and thus shape the ‘time-spaces’ of their lives. At the same time, by analyzing urban property relations, the research uncovers the ways in which layers of inequalities have, for decades, been produced and superimposed upon local actors in urban Romania, often deterring and limiting their efforts to “get by” in their everyday lives.
The complex methodological approach of the thesis – the use of life and family histories in combination with ethnographic and archival research – made possible the analysis of poverty and inequalities at many different scales, and from many different angles. The findings highlight the relational and interactional aspects of reproduction as it happens both at the very intimate individual and family levels and at the broader socio-structural level. The analysis reveals how life history narratives of the poor engaged in a dialog with broader social discourses on inequalities, and exposes the ways narrators’ perceptions influenced their actions in relation to structural contexts. Further, it shows how, in hierarchical and/or unequal structures and relationships, actors occupying different positions in social space often employ similar strategies to hold on to what they have, keep others at bay, and increase their own capital. In this context, the thesis examines at great length how individuals and families – depending on their social, cultural, and economic capital, but also on their social relations and networks – were able to cope with poverty and inequalities over the decades. Finally, the thesis makes clear that considering these approaches together helps to avoid some of the pitfalls seen in broader poverty literature that often emerge from, on the one hand, seeing structural constraints as totally limiting and debilitating human lives, inevitably leading to reproduction, and on the other hand, seeing human agency as over-empowering in relation to structural constraints over the course of a lifetime.