War and its absurdities
When Nadja was evacuated from the bomb shelter in eastern Ukraine, she took her cheese with her. She took the cheese from Luhansk to Kharkiv and almost to…
Author: Deborah Jones
Agents of Humor?
Students in Russia and Ukraine address global politics through local comedy Kostya, brow wrinkling, ended his call and told the team of rehearsing students, “Vova said he heard…
Class Politics and Romania’s “White Revolution”
The color white embodied exclusionary middle-class aspirations to moral governance and virtuous citizenship. Romania’s “White Revolution” (January–February 2017), the most recent episode of East Eur…
Relics of the Future
The sociotechnical functions of secondhand trams in Romanian cities. This post is the first in a three-part series on Romanian Mobilities: Vehicles of Migration in New Europe. The…
Who is Going to Fix the Road to Europe?
Road M15 near Reni, Ukraine in October, 2013. Photo courtesy Simon Schlegel When protests erupted in Ukraine in late November 2013, I was conducting fieldwork in southern Bessarabia,…