Emptiness: Living Capitalism and Democracy After (Post)Socialism Sept 2020 – Aug 2025

Overview

The project studies the emptying cities, towns, and villages in Eastern Europe and Russia through the lens of “emptiness” as a concrete historical formation that has emerged in conditions when socialist modernity is gone and promises of capitalist modernity have failed. More specifically, it: (1), studies the experiences and narratives of emptiness and emptying; (2), examines the politics and governance of emptying and emptiness; and (3), uses post-socialist “emptying” and “emptiness” as lenses for analysing global reconfigurations of relations between capital, the state, people, and place at a time when capital flows and statecraft are increasingly concentrated in “global cities,” with the rest of urban and non-urban spaces becoming radically disconnected.

Visit the website: emptiness.eu

ERC studentship

Applications are invited for a DPhil studentship in anthropology or migration studies; read more here.

Outputs

Dzenovska, D. (2019). Emptiness: Capitalism After Socialism, Medium

Dzenovska, D. (2020). Emptiness: Capitalism Without People in the Latvian Countryside, American Ethnologist

Dzenovska, D. (2019). The Timespace of Emptiness, American Ethnologist

Podcast

“Emptiness: Ways of Seeing” | 28 Sep-1 Oct 2021

• Roundtable 1: Emptiness: Space, Capital and the State
• Roundtable 2: On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China border. A book discussion with Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey

These roundtables were recorded at the conference which was part of the ERC-funded EMPTINESS project at the University of Oxford, with Rīga Stradiņš University generously hosting the 28 Sep 2021 Field Workshop and a local in-person viewing hub.

Постсоветская пустота (Post-Soviet Emptiness), Polka “Tozhe Rossia” (in Russian) | October 2019

Video