Olga Sasunkevich

Mia Liinason

Selin Çağatay

What do struggles for women’s and LGBTI+ rights in Russia, Turkey and the Scandinavian countries have in common? And what can actors who struggle for rights and justice in these contexts learn from each other? Based on a multisited ethnography of feminist and LGBTI+ activisms across Russia, Turkey and the Scandinavian countries, this Open Access book explores transnational struggles on various levels, from the micro-scale of the everyday to large-scale, spectacular events. Drawing on ethnographic insights and encounters from various sites, this book conceptualizes resistance as situated in the grey zone between barely perceptible, even hidden or covert, forms of mundane activist practices and highly visible street protests, gathering large crowds. Taking the reader beyond the dichotomies of visible/invisible and public/private, this book advances new understandings of resistance, solidarity, and activism in transnationalizing feminist and queer struggles, illustrated by rich ethnographic case studies from Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey.

Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance

Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey

Detailing the history of a well-known phenomenon of post-socialism - cross-border petty trade and smuggling - as the history of a practice in daily life from a gendered perspective, this book considers how changes in these practices in a particular border region, between Belarus and Lithuania, have been accompanied, and to some extent provoked, by changes in the border regime. It looks at how the selective openness of the Belarus-Lithuania border worked during different periods over the last twenty years and how it influenced the involvement of different social groups in shuttle trade practices. Foremost, this book considers how political borders implement and/or intensify social boundaries and suggests that the selective openness of political borders, a prerequisite for the existence of female shuttle trade activities, is primarily built upon people’s social characteristics. However, it claims that what can be seen as the grounds for growing inequality at a global level, at a local one may have an important resourceful meaning for various social groups including those usually perceived as disadvantaged, such as widowed female retirees or unemployed single women with children.

From Political Borders to Social Boundaries

Informal Trade, Gender and the Border Experience

Joachim Schiedermair

Barbara Törnquist-Plewa

Alexander Drost

The attraction of crises keeps going an entire sector of the media industry. Authors, painters, photographers and directors tell fascinating stories about the decline of empires and democracies as much as earthquakes and infectious diseases. Hereby, catastrophe and collapse evolve as a complex construct of experience, interpretation and emotion. The resulting narrative combines analyses of facts about the collapse with a retrospect evaluation, update and confirmation of these facts in the cultural memory of a given society. The random occurrence becomes a memorable event. The contributors of this volume have taken a narratological approach in examining collapse, disaster, catastrophe and how these in turn manifest themselves across different types of media. Die Anziehungskraft der „Krise“ stimuliert Kultur- und Medienschaffende gleichermaßen. Inspiriert erzählen sie fesselnde Geschichten vom Zusammenbruch von Imperien und Demokratien ebenso wie von Erdbeben und Epidemien. In diesen entwickeln sich Katastrophe und Untergang als komplexe Konstrukte aus Erfahrungen, Interpretationen und Emotionen. Sie vereinen die Analyse von Fakten über eine Katastrophe mit der Aktualisierung von Erfahrungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses im Umgang mit Katastrophen. Hierbei wird der beliebige Vorfall zum erinnerbaren Ereignis. Die Autoren dieses Bandes untersuchen aus narratologischer Perspektive Untergang, Desaster, Katastrophe und wie sie mittels verschiedener Medien erzählt werden. Herausgeber / Editors Alexander Drost (University of Greifswald); Volha Olga Sasunkevich (University of Gothenburg); Joachim Schiedermair (University of Greifswald); Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (Lund University) Beiträger / Contributors Dr. Uta Bretschneider (Kloster Veßra); Elizabeth Oxfeldt (University of Oslo); Philipp Wagner (Universität Wien); Florian Peters (Institut für Zeitgeschichte München – Berlin, Abt. Berlin); Mariëlle Wijermars (University of Helsinki); Valur Ingimundarson (University of Iceland); Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir (Háskóli Íslands); Franziska Sajdak (Universität Greifswald)

Narrating Past, Presence and Future about Periods of Crisis

Collapse of Memory - Memory of Collapse

Olga Sasunkevich

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