Resources and Everyday Conflicts in Rural Ukraine

Theorizing Social Change

When the Bulgarian minority in Bessarabia was exposed to the dual forces of globalizing political economy and the nationalizing Ukrainian state, life-worlds and resource use changed radically. Kaneff’s study is both an important addition to the literature on postsocialist transformation and, with its sophisticated conceptualization of resources, a truly original contribution to the analysis of social change generally.

Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

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Social change is a topic of central interest in the social sciences, and the upheavals and reforms that swept across former socialist states in Eurasia offer a rich array of case studies to deepen our understanding of social change. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a rural and ethnically Bulgarian community in Ukraine, Kaneff uniquely brings to light a range of hidden conflicts and tensions, as well as new alliances and solidarities resulting from the redistribution of resources after the transition away from state socialism. Kaneff focuses on five key resources which provide a means to explore the way in which relationships have been contested and renegotiated in this small community, with implications that go far beyond those boundaries.

300 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

September, 2025

isbn : 9780822948773

Series

Russian and East European Studies

Subjects

History / Europe / Eastern

about the author

Deema Kaneff is a Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Birmingham in the UK and an Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She has carried out long term fieldwork in Bulgaria and Ukraine and her research interests focus on property/resources and social change, social inequalities and migration. Deema is the Series Editor for a book series on Anthropologies of Eurasia: Ethnographic Encounters of Social Change (CEU Press), and a member of the Editorial Board for a book series on European Studies in Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, (Berghahn Press). She is also a member of the board of a number of journals, including: Südosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society; Bulgarska Ethnologia (Bulgarian Ethnology) and Ethnologia Balkanica (Balkan Ethnology). Deema is a founding member of the International Association for Southeast European Anthropology (InASEA) and a member of the European Association for Social Anthropologists (EASA). She is the author of a monograph based on her Bulgarian research: 2004 Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in a ‘Model’ Bulgarian Village, Oxford: Berghahn, as well as numerous other edited volumes and journal publications.

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