Seminar
The Europe Center
— hybrid event —
11 May 2023, 12 pm (PDT)
Stanford University, US
Tatjana Thelen: Parcels to the East: Politically Important, Theoretically Overseen.
Why have the politically, economically, and emotionally significant parcels sent from West Germany to the Socialist East been neglected by social theory? In my talk, I will argue that ideas of modernity on both sides of the Iron Curtain produced a blind spot that is worth reconsidering.
During the time that two German states existed, parcels sent to the Socialist East were politically, economically, and emotionally important. Successive West German government campaigns supported them as symbols of unity through tax releases, school and poster campaigns. Millions of parcels were sent each year and the socialist governments reluctantly learned to rely on their economic value. Increasingly, the exchange included large kinship networks beyond individual relations. After unification, these networks quickly dissolved and the parcels became symbols of difference between relatives, as well as between East and West Germany more broadly. Despite their material and immaterial significance, these kinship practices represent an epistemic void. They play no role in the analyses of family sociologists and students of political transformation. In my talk, I ask why social scientists have not paid attention to these practices and argue that ideas of modernity on both sides of the Iron Curtain produced this blind spot. Taking these exchanges seriously could still eventually lead to new insights into the co-production of state and kinship.
Colloquium
Department of Anthropology
— hybrid event —
30 January 2023, 3:30-5:00 pm
Stanford University, US
Tatjana Thelen: Care and state: A theoretical approach and an example from the Hungarian countryside.
In many contemporary debates, care has been invoked to criticize the state, and to demand more support for citizens, families and communities. While politically effective, this use of care is theoretically problematic: it reproduces top-down images and scales that oppose ‘micro’ care practices to the encompassing ‘macro’ state. The first part of this talk presents a proposal for overcoming these binaries by exploring the coevolution of the state and its ‘others’ – most notably family/kinship, community and civil society – in negotiations of care. In the second part, I demonstrate some aspects of this approach using an example of marginalization in a Hungarian village. At the center of this exploration are ideals of parental care widely shared by state actors and other citizens. My ultimate aim is to invert the hierarchy and ask how care shapes state configurations.