“Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia
Especially after the recent reform of the local self-government, Russian municipalities suffer from insufficient resources to provide well-being for their citizens. Resolutions to local social problems are sought by mixing state and non-state efforts. These efforts are carried out predominantly at a...
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ftindianausw:oai:ojs.scholarworks.iu.edu:article/936 2024-06-09T07:47:26+00:00 “Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia Kulmala, Meri 2010-12-13 application/pdf https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/936 eng eng IUScholarWorks https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/936/1056 https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/936 Anthropology of East Europe Review; Vol. 28 No. 2 (2010): Special Issue:"Gender Shift in the North of Russia"; 164-185 2153-2931 1054-4720 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Special Issue article 2010 ftindianausw 2024-05-16T07:51:45Z Especially after the recent reform of the local self-government, Russian municipalities suffer from insufficient resources to provide well-being for their citizens. Resolutions to local social problems are sought by mixing state and non-state efforts. These efforts are carried out predominantly at a grassroots level by women from the public and voluntary sectors. The article discusses women’s community organizing in several villages of a municipal district in Russian Karelia in the 2000s; thus, it focuses on the understudied, but very elementary, level of government from the viewpoint of citizens on the borders of Russia. Drawing on the ethnographic data, I show that community activism relies on middle-aged and well-educated women holding a good position in municipal institutions. Thus, the roles of the activists and administrators blur, which makes the sharp division, predominant in the scholarly literature, between the state and civil society misleading. New forms of agency compete, coexist, or merge with old Soviet practices of social support and activism. I suggest that the logic of action of this women’s community organizing relies mainly on the domestic, civic, and inspired orders described by Boltanski and Thévenot (2001). Article in Journal/Newspaper karelia* IUScholarWorks Journals (Indiana University) |
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IUScholarWorks Journals (Indiana University) |
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ftindianausw |
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English |
description |
Especially after the recent reform of the local self-government, Russian municipalities suffer from insufficient resources to provide well-being for their citizens. Resolutions to local social problems are sought by mixing state and non-state efforts. These efforts are carried out predominantly at a grassroots level by women from the public and voluntary sectors. The article discusses women’s community organizing in several villages of a municipal district in Russian Karelia in the 2000s; thus, it focuses on the understudied, but very elementary, level of government from the viewpoint of citizens on the borders of Russia. Drawing on the ethnographic data, I show that community activism relies on middle-aged and well-educated women holding a good position in municipal institutions. Thus, the roles of the activists and administrators blur, which makes the sharp division, predominant in the scholarly literature, between the state and civil society misleading. New forms of agency compete, coexist, or merge with old Soviet practices of social support and activism. I suggest that the logic of action of this women’s community organizing relies mainly on the domestic, civic, and inspired orders described by Boltanski and Thévenot (2001). |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Kulmala, Meri |
spellingShingle |
Kulmala, Meri “Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia |
author_facet |
Kulmala, Meri |
author_sort |
Kulmala, Meri |
title |
“Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia |
title_short |
“Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia |
title_full |
“Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia |
title_fullStr |
“Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia |
title_full_unstemmed |
“Women Rule This Country”: Women’s Community Organizing and Care in Rural Karelia |
title_sort |
“women rule this country”: women’s community organizing and care in rural karelia |
publisher |
IUScholarWorks |
publishDate |
2010 |
url |
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/936 |
genre |
karelia* |
genre_facet |
karelia* |
op_source |
Anthropology of East Europe Review; Vol. 28 No. 2 (2010): Special Issue:"Gender Shift in the North of Russia"; 164-185 2153-2931 1054-4720 |
op_relation |
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/936/1056 https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/936 |
_version_ |
1801378508266536960 |