1 00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:27,530 Welcome back, everyone. Is this now me or it's not OK, but that's up here. 2 00:00:27,530 --> 00:00:35,740 You know, we're just we're in this very advanced, technologically advanced material, which is great, but it confuses me occasionally. 3 00:00:35,740 --> 00:00:43,400 So bear with me. So hello again from from Riga, from Riga, Latvia. 4 00:00:43,400 --> 00:00:54,070 I'm really, really very happy to to to welcome all the panel, the roundtable participants to this to this event. 5 00:00:54,070 --> 00:00:58,660 This roundtable is entitled Emptiness Space Capital in the State, 6 00:00:58,660 --> 00:01:07,600 and I will begin by introducing the speakers after which I will just say a few introductory words, 7 00:01:07,600 --> 00:01:20,320 and so will Volodya to kind of begin the discussion and something that then the roundtable participants will use to refer to or respond to. 8 00:01:20,320 --> 00:01:25,990 So we will. We are joined today by Saskia Sesan, who is Robert Blinged, 9 00:01:25,990 --> 00:01:33,220 professor of sociology at Columbia University and an exceptionally inspiring speaker or think and 10 00:01:33,220 --> 00:01:41,680 thinker rather than speaker as well about the city migration and global spatial reconfigurations. 11 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:52,660 Her work on the global city and on expulsions has been one of the inspirations for this project, and we're very happy to help her think with us today. 12 00:01:52,660 --> 00:02:03,310 I think she's joining us from New York. Johanna Berkman joins us from Washington, D.C. or somewhere nearby. 13 00:02:03,310 --> 00:02:13,000 I'm not entirely sure. You'll have to correct me. She's associate professor of sociology and global affairs at George Mason University. 14 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:15,850 Some 10 years ago, Johanna blew our minds, 15 00:02:15,850 --> 00:02:23,380 if I may say so with her book on the left wing origins of Neo Liberalism, in which she carried out a truly trans, 16 00:02:23,380 --> 00:02:32,020 local and relational analysis of the practises and arguments that led to the rise of neo liberalism in the 1980s and 90s. 17 00:02:32,020 --> 00:02:38,170 Even though she has moved on to analysis of gentrification in Washington, DC, we hope that she will. 18 00:02:38,170 --> 00:02:45,950 Due to emptiness today what she did to neo liberalism neo liberalism in her book. 19 00:02:45,950 --> 00:02:56,480 Don Kolbe is a professor of anthropology at the University of Bergen, where he moved after a long career at the Central European University. 20 00:02:56,480 --> 00:03:02,870 He's a fellow traveller for some of us in terms of Marxist inspired analysis of global processes. 21 00:03:02,870 --> 00:03:11,930 He has written extensively on globalisation, class labour and neo nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe and in Europe more broadly. 22 00:03:11,930 --> 00:03:18,530 Don is also the founding editor of the journal Focal Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 23 00:03:18,530 --> 00:03:23,780 and we very much look forward to hearing his thoughts today. 24 00:03:23,780 --> 00:03:31,760 Last but not least, Martin Demand Fredrickson is a social anthropologist at our university doing research in Georgia, 25 00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:42,590 Croatia, but now also in Denmark. Martin writes about resonant things, about nothingness, the materiality of decay on things, the periphery, and more. 26 00:03:42,590 --> 00:03:46,700 He sometimes joins us for inspiring and generative conversations. 27 00:03:46,700 --> 00:03:55,070 Last year, we collaborated on a special forum for Cultural Anthropology, where Martin contributed an essay on emptiness and surfaces. 28 00:03:55,070 --> 00:04:00,860 We also share an interest in tourism as the last utopia in some of the empty places, 29 00:04:00,860 --> 00:04:08,750 so we're hoping that Martin can ground us today if we start to kind of travel globally too much. 30 00:04:08,750 --> 00:04:15,050 OK, so let me then begin with a few words that I kind of just said to the conversation going. 31 00:04:15,050 --> 00:04:20,540 And I already spoke during the introduction to the conference a bit about how 32 00:04:20,540 --> 00:04:26,060 I encountered emptiness and how I understood it demographically in Latvia. 33 00:04:26,060 --> 00:04:31,670 And you read it in the material that I sent you earlier in this roundtable. 34 00:04:31,670 --> 00:04:40,430 We want to focus on the spatial dimensions of emptiness and on emptiness as an emerging 35 00:04:40,430 --> 00:04:46,490 spatial coordinates in the contemporary landscape of capital and political power. 36 00:04:46,490 --> 00:04:51,710 As I began to outline in the introduction to this conference, 37 00:04:51,710 --> 00:05:02,420 one way to see emptiness is as a particular reordering of relations between people place the state capital and 38 00:05:02,420 --> 00:05:11,720 the future that opens up to analysis of configurations of power that exceed specific articulation of emptiness. 39 00:05:11,720 --> 00:05:22,040 Now we'd like to zoom in, so to speak, on some of this reordering and perhaps even put the term emptiness aside for a moment. 40 00:05:22,040 --> 00:05:27,980 As part of the spatial reordering that constitutes emptiness in eastern Latvia, 41 00:05:27,980 --> 00:05:35,930 living spaces are turning into overgrown fields or spaces of agricultural production or forestry. 42 00:05:35,930 --> 00:05:42,890 Spaces of industrial production, in turn, are becoming zones of abandoned people plan. 43 00:05:42,890 --> 00:05:55,760 Their days around mobile and increasingly distant services is instead of receiving them nearby churches, the symbol of a particular ideological order, 44 00:05:55,760 --> 00:06:03,650 have been returned to their functioning after serving as warehouses or sports halls during Soviet industrialisation, 45 00:06:03,650 --> 00:06:13,760 but are empty because people are gone and local government officials talk about growth even as they cannot plan for it. 46 00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:18,200 Such a spatial reordering is the result of translatable processes. 47 00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:27,470 It invites analysis of emptiness not only as a particular condition of life, but also as a spatial coordinates alongside global cities in the space, 48 00:06:27,470 --> 00:06:34,970 in the changing spatial configurations of capital and political power that extend beyond specific localities. 49 00:06:34,970 --> 00:06:45,710 Understanding the spatial order of which emptiness is part, in turn, requires a rethinking the analytical terms. 50 00:06:45,710 --> 00:06:53,360 Analytical terms of the past, there have been noteworthy analytical moves in this direction, 51 00:06:53,360 --> 00:06:58,520 for example, such as dozens analysis of global cities in her work and explosion, 52 00:06:58,520 --> 00:07:07,670 as well as Neil Brenner's and Nicole Catechist spatial scheme that consists of global urban agglomerations and hinterlands. 53 00:07:07,670 --> 00:07:13,700 The latter demarcated, as I quote as a variety of nano cities, faces, 54 00:07:13,700 --> 00:07:20,660 whether as supply zones, impact zones, sacrifice zones, logistics corridors or otherwise, 55 00:07:20,660 --> 00:07:25,220 which could include diverse types of settlements, towns, villages, hamlets, 56 00:07:25,220 --> 00:07:30,650 land use configurations, industrial, agricultural, extractive and ecologies. 57 00:07:30,650 --> 00:07:35,630 Terrestrial oceanic subterranean atmospheric end quote. 58 00:07:35,630 --> 00:07:39,830 This doesn't mean that emptiness is rural for non city. 59 00:07:39,830 --> 00:07:49,190 Spaces include towns as well, but it is arguably losing its urbanity, while at the same time being part of planetary urbanisation. 60 00:07:49,190 --> 00:07:59,120 Empty spaces could fall broadly within Brenner and could seek its hinterland category, but this is only the beginning of enquiry rather than the end. 61 00:07:59,120 --> 00:08:07,730 Emptying spaces remain black boxes in this model. For little is known about capitalist's relations that may be operable operational 62 00:08:07,730 --> 00:08:13,730 there or about the forms of life that emerge in response or through them. 63 00:08:13,730 --> 00:08:23,000 It may be the case that the empty spaces are altogether expelled from capitalist relations, providing no resources for capital accumulation. 64 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:29,690 And perhaps it is in these cases that emptiness seems truly empty, as when, for example, 65 00:08:29,690 --> 00:08:38,390 abandoned and decaying houses in the countryside resist marketisation due to unclear property relations. 66 00:08:38,390 --> 00:08:42,770 At the same time, these places can be sources of labour for other hinterland, 67 00:08:42,770 --> 00:08:49,970 such as these rural villages becoming sources of labour for the British agricultural sector. 68 00:08:49,970 --> 00:08:57,650 Our approach, then, is one of looking into the black box of expelled places or hinterlands, 69 00:08:57,650 --> 00:09:07,220 which is likely to generate insights about different forms of life while not losing sight of the place of emptiness in the global order of things. 70 00:09:07,220 --> 00:09:19,970 And now I'll hand it over to Volodya, a duke who is my co-host or co co-chair of this roundtable hour before the microphone. 71 00:09:19,970 --> 00:09:24,660 I thank you both. So can you hear him? Yes. 72 00:09:24,660 --> 00:09:34,490 OK, so we've been in search of a common theoretical language to talk about emptiness across fields side sounds, except for a lot VR. 73 00:09:34,490 --> 00:09:40,970 We can read about the vacant housing in Budapest and London in the context of financialization. 74 00:09:40,970 --> 00:09:49,340 We can read about vanishing model towns in Georgia and Russia as consequences of the industrialisation destroyed 75 00:09:49,340 --> 00:10:04,090 and disrupted livelihoods in Ukraine has done bust or in Bosnia and Herzegovina brought by civil war. 76 00:10:04,090 --> 00:10:26,350 I lost. A.K.A. We've lost the microphone. 77 00:10:26,350 --> 00:10:30,070 It's my village's microphone is not working. Is that right? 78 00:10:30,070 --> 00:10:37,090 OK. Do then come here, OK? 79 00:10:37,090 --> 00:10:45,460 No, not if they can. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Sorry, I just thought. 80 00:10:45,460 --> 00:10:52,900 But you want to be seen on this? So just put your computer there and just go for it. 81 00:10:52,900 --> 00:10:56,850 Yeah, yeah. Is it good now? Yes. 82 00:10:56,850 --> 00:11:15,820 Yes. Okay. Thanks. Yes. Before I started with our theoretical journey and looking for critical concepts to grasp antennas and where we start. 83 00:11:15,820 --> 00:11:19,840 I yeah, no. That's fine. 84 00:11:19,840 --> 00:11:23,830 No. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. 85 00:11:23,830 --> 00:11:33,400 So the question that that I was posing was where to look for a theory of post-Soviet emptiness. 86 00:11:33,400 --> 00:11:38,260 And we started with the start with the point that was obvious to us, 87 00:11:38,260 --> 00:11:47,000 and it was the early Marxist authorisation of space as integral to social production of life. 88 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:54,550 However, the classical facts on the production of space emerged on the state supported monopoly capitalism, 89 00:11:54,550 --> 00:12:05,710 where spaces of emptiness were regarded as either disappearing or utopian in the moments of transition or crisis there. 90 00:12:05,710 --> 00:12:11,440 The older representations of space were supposed to be so suppressed by the new ones, 91 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:21,220 partially incorporated into the dominant space and partially appropriated by this subaltern representational spaces. 92 00:12:21,220 --> 00:12:28,830 But what they encountered. In my fieldwork in Ukraine several years ago. 93 00:12:28,830 --> 00:12:33,450 Would only partially be only partially with this scheme. 94 00:12:33,450 --> 00:12:40,950 There was a field working in a giant soviet-era tire factory that structure the livelihoods of 95 00:12:40,950 --> 00:12:46,920 two thousand eight hundred strong city was fractured into many large and small private firms, 96 00:12:46,920 --> 00:12:52,770 surrounded by limited traffic and autonomous forms of informality. 97 00:12:52,770 --> 00:12:59,100 This, however, look far removed from a forward march of a new mode of production of space. 98 00:12:59,100 --> 00:13:05,050 So Walton's coping practises look even less like active appropriation. 99 00:13:05,050 --> 00:13:10,740 Does the post-Soviet emptiness poses a challenge for terrorising production of space? 100 00:13:10,740 --> 00:13:15,690 It is problematic to find a clear-cut change in the mode of production it raises. 101 00:13:15,690 --> 00:13:24,460 The crisis seems never ending and always shifting. The class struggle is surreptitious and to. 102 00:13:24,460 --> 00:13:34,630 It is true that the new developments in March, theorising of space mentioned by dots already open some perspectives. 103 00:13:34,630 --> 00:13:40,480 For example, Brammer schools rely on the older man for the distinction between building 104 00:13:40,480 --> 00:13:47,790 infrastructural clustering and building the degradation of very urban spaces. 105 00:13:47,790 --> 00:13:51,680 Well, this is still a result of situated capital accumulation, 106 00:13:51,680 --> 00:13:58,670 which demands resources and intensifies extraction and such on building indeed can be found in 107 00:13:58,670 --> 00:14:06,400 half abandoned villages around quickly developing industrial centres exhausted agricultural zones. 108 00:14:06,400 --> 00:14:13,090 However, what we empirically encounter in post-Soviet space space is nearly abandoned by both 109 00:14:13,090 --> 00:14:18,770 Typekit on this day and the spaces of dense de-industrialisation of migration, 110 00:14:18,770 --> 00:14:29,800 disinvestment and war. Thus, creative destruction does not exhaust all the absurd forms of post-Soviet emptiness. 111 00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:35,840 We could take a cue from Mark's discussion of surplus population and his distinction 112 00:14:35,840 --> 00:14:45,390 between the relative surplus and absolute surplus population and endeavour to cool. 113 00:14:45,390 --> 00:14:51,540 Some state of affairs on the ground, absolute emptiness, which doesn't mean it's absolute. 114 00:14:51,540 --> 00:15:00,540 There is nothing. There is absolute in relation to capital and the state, which is paradoxically full of formerly productive remnants, 115 00:15:00,540 --> 00:15:08,010 would fall outside of the foremost of some would not be restricted to hinterlands or operational spaces. 116 00:15:08,010 --> 00:15:16,560 This is where I see this is how I conceptually see the division of my future fieldwork. 117 00:15:16,560 --> 00:15:20,490 This absolute emptiness would be centre in Donbas. 118 00:15:20,490 --> 00:15:27,720 The rest of Ukraine would be more relevant to relative to those deindustrialisation and deserted villages. 119 00:15:27,720 --> 00:15:36,960 Meanwhile, Belarus would probably represent something like a forum formerly subsumed antennas. 120 00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:51,810 And these are the provisional scheme which which I will try to develop further with the help of our collaborative efforts, 121 00:15:51,810 --> 00:16:09,300 and I hope that I invite all participants today to think through and help us with the impulses that we faced in our theoretical journey and. 122 00:16:09,300 --> 00:16:20,360 Offer us the opportunities to develop conceptualisation of our team further. 123 00:16:20,360 --> 00:16:33,470 And until. It it does it tends to be when when you really need it, the most, certainly something starts going wrong, but that's part of the challenge. 124 00:16:33,470 --> 00:16:41,180 Thank you all. So hopefully you can hear and see if you can just let us know in some way. 125 00:16:41,180 --> 00:16:45,590 So I will then handed it over now to Saskia, please. 126 00:16:45,590 --> 00:16:50,420 We're really happy to have you and the floor is yours, OK? 127 00:16:50,420 --> 00:16:55,190 And I'm delighted to be here, and I'm hoping you can hear me well. 128 00:16:55,190 --> 00:17:05,780 Yes. OK, very good. So I find this a fascinating concept that you have sort of produced. 129 00:17:05,780 --> 00:17:10,710 I don't know your your, your area, your land, et cetera. 130 00:17:10,710 --> 00:17:17,180 I don't have that knowledge, but I'm very intrigued by the concept. 131 00:17:17,180 --> 00:17:32,380 And so a first little question I have before I proceed is whether emptiness destroyed land, poisoned water bodies. 132 00:17:32,380 --> 00:17:42,010 Do you have that in your because we have that in the Americas, the Americas, whether the North or the south are amongst the most brutal, 133 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:52,600 the most brutal kinds of ways in which we have produced and used people destroyed water bodies. 134 00:17:52,600 --> 00:18:03,340 So I'm sort of curious, and maybe you can give me just a very quick answer, whether in your land destructions have happened, 135 00:18:03,340 --> 00:18:13,120 you know, the poisoning of water is via chemicals in all of that because we have we in the West have done a lot of that. 136 00:18:13,120 --> 00:18:23,080 We have destroyed so many bodies of water just to mention one that there are it's not only water and. 137 00:18:23,080 --> 00:18:38,050 And the question is, how can we humans be so stupid, so brutal that we destroy what is actually one of the most important? 138 00:18:38,050 --> 00:18:48,070 And that's water and water in its many manifestations, elements that allow us to survive. 139 00:18:48,070 --> 00:18:59,350 Now I grew up in Latin America. Latin America is a vast continent that is mostly empty. 140 00:18:59,350 --> 00:19:05,920 There are particular areas you know that that have very intense crowds. 141 00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:13,210 Sao Paolo, et cetera. But really, so much of the America is empty now. 142 00:19:13,210 --> 00:19:17,410 A lot of empty is destroyed. It's destroyed land. 143 00:19:17,410 --> 00:19:27,670 It's because the expanse of land is such that it was easy, unlike, say, in Europe to abuse it and to destroy it. 144 00:19:27,670 --> 00:19:37,570 And so it's lying there, dead poisonous sleep debt very often, in other words, something that is really not good. 145 00:19:37,570 --> 00:19:41,110 Now, at the same time, again, back to my story. 146 00:19:41,110 --> 00:19:54,750 Growing up in Argentina, Argentina is a very big country, but very empty, you know, and then when you come to Europe. 147 00:19:54,750 --> 00:19:59,250 SpaceX is one of the most precious things to have. 148 00:19:59,250 --> 00:20:09,030 So I'm just always amazed at how we humans manage to be sufficiently sedentary, in other words, 149 00:20:09,030 --> 00:20:15,570 we don't want to move too much that we would rather be in an enormous city for, 150 00:20:15,570 --> 00:20:26,210 say, Sao Paolo, full of really bad air quality than, say, going to a small town where you might have very clear. 151 00:20:26,210 --> 00:20:34,680 What so what is it about our modernity that has, and I think we're beginning to see a change here. 152 00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:44,530 But up until now, our modernity has been marked by us accepting all kinds of very destructive models. 153 00:20:44,530 --> 00:20:47,370 So we have destroyed a lot of water bodies. 154 00:20:47,370 --> 00:21:00,210 We have destroyed small towns, you know, a lot of destruction, not the destructions of war and the destruction of the quotidian everyday life. 155 00:21:00,210 --> 00:21:08,040 And to me, I really like the way you described your your project to me. 156 00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:15,480 There is something very interesting in trying to extract if you want. 157 00:21:15,480 --> 00:21:22,770 What is it that we are going to war because we have in the West? 158 00:21:22,770 --> 00:21:31,890 Certainly, I repeat, destroy a lot and we have done it in a sense of order is so much space. 159 00:21:31,890 --> 00:21:39,330 There is so much of this, there is so much of that that we think of it as an invisible little negative, you know, 160 00:21:39,330 --> 00:21:48,210 all the little destructions and a few big destruction, but a kind of sense of we can handle it, it will survive it. 161 00:21:48,210 --> 00:21:56,310 And there is hope in that an arrogance that is really stunning that we think that, oh, everything will be OK. 162 00:21:56,310 --> 00:22:09,060 No, it won't. We have already destroyed half of certain types of forms of life plants, trees, etc. Just destroyed. 163 00:22:09,060 --> 00:22:15,870 And has the moment arrived because now I have been at several conferences that deal with this subject. 164 00:22:15,870 --> 00:22:19,860 How has the moment arrived that we are becoming very, 165 00:22:19,860 --> 00:22:31,400 very aware of the losses that we have experienced because of how we have treated plants, water bodies, sand? 166 00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:38,970 You mention it. And so so the question is, are there also in play? 167 00:22:38,970 --> 00:22:48,030 In other words, emergent modes of thinking of analysing, of building off, 168 00:22:48,030 --> 00:22:56,190 of producing housing, of enabling what we need to enable we humans in order to survive. 169 00:22:56,190 --> 00:23:04,170 Now my sense is that in certain parts of the world, and I think this part where you are is one of those, 170 00:23:04,170 --> 00:23:09,540 this is beginning to be recognised in the Americas. 171 00:23:09,540 --> 00:23:22,740 It is not now. Partly, as I mentioned, the Americas are so big and so relatively speaking empty that there is a sense of, Oh my god, you know this. 172 00:23:22,740 --> 00:23:27,660 This can go on for a very long time. We can destroy here and there, and we'll still be fine. 173 00:23:27,660 --> 00:23:30,930 Whereas in Europe, it's a bit tighter. 174 00:23:30,930 --> 00:23:42,780 And I think that we should at some point really have a good analysis of the difference between how the Americas with the vastness of empty land, 175 00:23:42,780 --> 00:23:48,060 so to speak, versus Europe and versus other parts of the world. 176 00:23:48,060 --> 00:23:56,280 I think that that that there is something in play nowadays, something that we absolutely must address, 177 00:23:56,280 --> 00:24:05,550 but in a way are not addressing, which is how we build, how we travel, you know, all kinds of things like that. 178 00:24:05,550 --> 00:24:11,520 Now, I think, as I said, the younger generations are moving in that direction. 179 00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:15,120 Not everybody clearly. But so it is an interesting moment. 180 00:24:15,120 --> 00:24:25,410 And so sort of to conclude, have we entered my question, have we entered a new epoch? 181 00:24:25,410 --> 00:24:38,610 And I tend to say, yes, we have entered a new epoch and partly we don't notice that or we cannot necessarily know that that has happened 182 00:24:38,610 --> 00:24:49,410 in many ways that no epoch has happened because we are caught up in a multiplicity of modes of survival, 183 00:24:49,410 --> 00:24:54,370 of building, of making, of how we travel, etc., etc. 184 00:24:54,370 --> 00:25:01,180 That have been with us for quite a long time, so we tend to assume, OK, this is not new. 185 00:25:01,180 --> 00:25:09,880 We have been doing this for 30 years. You know, this is this way of travelling, this way of building this way of cetera, 186 00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:13,980 et cetera, with acceptance of certain countries have been very, very good. 187 00:25:13,980 --> 00:25:21,280 The fact the Netherlands, I would say, kind of because they had to, since half of the country is below sea level. 188 00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:28,560 But most countries are not that way. And so most countries have been able to to sort of abuse it all of it. 189 00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:35,710 And and and then the question emerges for me. 190 00:25:35,710 --> 00:25:40,270 Have we again, have we entered a new epic? 191 00:25:40,270 --> 00:25:48,010 And are we not quite able to detect the difference now? 192 00:25:48,010 --> 00:25:52,510 This notion of having entered a new epoch has two phases. 193 00:25:52,510 --> 00:25:59,290 I would say two extremes two extremes, and I exaggerate a bit here just for simplicity sake. 194 00:25:59,290 --> 00:26:05,470 One is a profoundly negative one. I see that in the Americas. 195 00:26:05,470 --> 00:26:10,840 They are so big, so much empty space that they just abuse it. 196 00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:17,740 So you you start a mining operation and you don't. Even when you're done, they don't even bother. 197 00:26:17,740 --> 00:26:27,370 Unlike, say, in Europe, they don't bother to clean up, you know, all the poisonous elements that are used when you have one of those operations. 198 00:26:27,370 --> 00:26:33,670 At least, I would say in Europe, there is there is just far more population, 199 00:26:33,670 --> 00:26:39,610 far more need for land, far more need to protect land or we're out of business. 200 00:26:39,610 --> 00:26:44,210 And that has turned out to be a positive. 201 00:26:44,210 --> 00:26:53,860 The negative happens in the vastness of the emptiness of the Americas, especially the America, so other parts of the world. 202 00:26:53,860 --> 00:27:03,980 But let's just focus on that. So there is an irony in that because we have so much empty space in the Americas. 203 00:27:03,980 --> 00:27:16,310 And I repeat in a few other parts of the world, we don't have a sense of urgency and urgency is really what is called for. 204 00:27:16,310 --> 00:27:23,810 I think we have entered a new epoch and that new epoch is marked by some very dangerous 205 00:27:23,810 --> 00:27:29,750 capabilities that can really destroy far more than we can afford to have destroyed. 206 00:27:29,750 --> 00:27:36,200 We have left, especially in the Americas, with the notion that, my God, you know, we can live through this. 207 00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:45,830 We, you know, there's so much empty land, et cetera, the whole notion of empty land as a corruption of what is actually happening. 208 00:27:45,830 --> 00:27:49,850 We shouldn't think of it as an empty land with we should. 209 00:27:49,850 --> 00:27:53,150 In other words, empty land where you can build anything. 210 00:27:53,150 --> 00:28:07,050 We should think of it as the last remaining operational, healthy with with plenty of of sun, plenty of water, plenty of good quality air, etc. 211 00:28:07,050 --> 00:28:16,370 It's the rareness of it that we should be protecting rather than saying, OK, everything is fine here. 212 00:28:16,370 --> 00:28:22,580 No, it is not. We need to protect a battle lies ahead of us. 213 00:28:22,580 --> 00:28:30,590 Thank you very much for your attention. Here. 214 00:28:30,590 --> 00:28:42,400 Thank you very much. Saskia, I it's really quite quite a call for us to think about to kind of urgently think about 215 00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:50,270 the land empty in the positive or negative ways in what I hear you to be saying, 216 00:28:50,270 --> 00:28:59,930 sort of from a position of a kind of a universal subject and the questions you posed about whether there is destruction, 217 00:28:59,930 --> 00:29:10,610 I suppose in whatever each of us would understand with our land probably will emerge as as as the speakers go on. 218 00:29:10,610 --> 00:29:16,370 And everyone would have some some other question or rather response to that. 219 00:29:16,370 --> 00:29:27,890 So I'll maybe move on to Johanna and then we can kind of return to this question when we start this discussion. 220 00:29:27,890 --> 00:29:32,750 Thank you very much, Johanna. Yes, thank you so much. 221 00:29:32,750 --> 00:29:36,870 This is great. I have. I find this also to be a very fascinating topic. 222 00:29:36,870 --> 00:29:42,410 I I myself don't. I am merely an observer of these trends. 223 00:29:42,410 --> 00:29:53,330 And so I find this really interesting to use this term as an analytical term and to think about a common theoretical language to talk across this, 224 00:29:53,330 --> 00:29:57,590 as Lydia said about talking across these various field sites. 225 00:29:57,590 --> 00:30:05,270 And so and specifically talking about a post-Soviet theory, a theory of a post-Soviet space and in its place. 226 00:30:05,270 --> 00:30:16,760 So I and and I think that it's important that you, of course, are highlighting the key element as abandonment by the state and capital. 227 00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:23,420 So I want to talk a little bit about the idea of comparison for a minute because you're comparing across many different cases, 228 00:30:23,420 --> 00:30:29,150 and this may lead to certain categorisations of different types and things like that. 229 00:30:29,150 --> 00:30:38,150 You're looking for maybe possibly an underlying structure or underlying reality that these that are affecting these many different cases. 230 00:30:38,150 --> 00:30:42,650 But I think that there are some other ways to think about comparison that might also be additionally 231 00:30:42,650 --> 00:30:50,930 helpful when we think about comparison in order to understand what makes emptying happen. 232 00:30:50,930 --> 00:30:58,310 We also should compare the emptying villages with our towns with those that are not emptying right. 233 00:30:58,310 --> 00:31:05,960 And we could we could sort of assume that this non emptying areas are due or because they have tourism or whatever. 234 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,650 But I mean, it requires the thought that you're doing that. You're doing so well in this. 235 00:31:09,650 --> 00:31:15,770 Emptying villages and towns also compare with the actual non end to be emptying. 236 00:31:15,770 --> 00:31:18,980 And of course, we could. We could do not empty. We could do global cities. 237 00:31:18,980 --> 00:31:25,100 But I think actually it would be more important to compare with villages and towns as a comparison case. 238 00:31:25,100 --> 00:31:32,210 But also and I think that some of you are also working on this is that certain parts of towns, 239 00:31:32,210 --> 00:31:37,520 like certain parts of towns or villages are emptying and other parts are not. 240 00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:47,600 That's as scarce often as made. This very important about how to think about parts of cities as having different dynamics going on. 241 00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:57,260 But also, we should also think about the possibility that these towns and villages actually are not independent cases and can actually be compared. 242 00:31:57,260 --> 00:32:04,200 There are, in fact, possibilities that these are in fact cases that are causing other cases. 243 00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:13,220 I mean, I'm going to give one example based on I you know, I heard about in the past about the socialist government in Romania that, 244 00:32:13,220 --> 00:32:20,540 you know, attempted to do a mass destruction of villages as a form of creating efficiencies in the rural areas. 245 00:32:20,540 --> 00:32:31,160 I only heard about that. But we can see possibly that elites are looking at these cases that were provoked a 246 00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:36,770 huge outcry and are learning from previous cases not only in the socialist period, 247 00:32:36,770 --> 00:32:42,830 but in the whole socialist period. They may be looking around and seeing that really over there, that town over there did this. 248 00:32:42,830 --> 00:32:48,470 We can do that too. Right. So there that causal aspect is very important. 249 00:32:48,470 --> 00:32:52,160 But also we can see that the residents are also learning from other places. 250 00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:58,040 They can look at a town nearby or a town in another place and they can go, Oh my God, that place had this happen. 251 00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:02,600 I'm going to get that get out of town as soon as possible because I don't want to be part of that. 252 00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:08,480 Right. So this is this is also a problem. This is not these are not independent cases. 253 00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:12,950 There are in fact causing each other to happen, right? So I think that's an important thing. 254 00:33:12,950 --> 00:33:15,020 So we can see this instead of a comparative. 255 00:33:15,020 --> 00:33:23,060 There's an aspect that when I talk about is that is the transnational trend that is created by this causal effect, 256 00:33:23,060 --> 00:33:29,350 also whatever kind of comparison that we do. 257 00:33:29,350 --> 00:33:37,420 We can we need to ask why some spaces are empty and other are not are tending towards emptiness. 258 00:33:37,420 --> 00:33:46,030 And we, as you guys are you been look at capital city. Also, Empire is very important to the ending of empires. 259 00:33:46,030 --> 00:33:57,730 But in the beginning of new empires. But but also we can think about look at why certain spaces do not empty because of their social dynamics. 260 00:33:57,730 --> 00:34:08,560 If they are spaces that are that are spaces of social solidarity that have special solidarity that make them less likely to empty. 261 00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:15,820 We also might see certain spaces of spaces of horrible trauma that people might want to leave as soon as possible. 262 00:34:15,820 --> 00:34:21,760 So, I mean, that's just an example of I've been looking at this place in Maryland called Port Tobacco was 263 00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:28,600 a vibrant community and a horrifying community based on a deep slavery and tobacco trade. 264 00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:32,620 And it is in the late 19th century, everyone leaves. 265 00:34:32,620 --> 00:34:36,130 There's like 12 people left. So like, it's like, you know, 266 00:34:36,130 --> 00:34:47,650 this is a species of deep social trauma where you could also think of in the kind of margins distant or sort of far reaches of Russia. 267 00:34:47,650 --> 00:34:55,450 We could think of gulag towns as places of trauma, but we could also see them as places of refuge and that people, 268 00:34:55,450 --> 00:35:02,690 you know, found found solidarity there possibly and decided to remain in and to keep that solidarity, it's possible. 269 00:35:02,690 --> 00:35:09,980 I don't really know. We can also see that in Ivan or Reykjavik is talk. 270 00:35:09,980 --> 00:35:14,770 He's going to talk about the environmental protests leading to the revival of the city. 271 00:35:14,770 --> 00:35:22,540 And some of these places me then have a layering of social solidarity too, so we can think of a city, these towns, 272 00:35:22,540 --> 00:35:32,530 as having a palimpsest of layering of social trauma or social solidarity that might make some spaces these these spaces, 273 00:35:32,530 --> 00:35:35,560 you know, not want to embody in other places, too. 274 00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:43,900 But we'd have to also talk with the people who leave and never come back to, which isn't the difficulty of this kind of question. 275 00:35:43,900 --> 00:35:51,940 But I'm also thinking about this, too. I think of Julia Gillard's work on waste in Hungary. 276 00:35:51,940 --> 00:35:56,770 And she talks about the hegemonic view that socialism was always ruined. 277 00:35:56,770 --> 00:36:04,960 It was always grey. It was always the socialist legacy was a vast wasteland or a wasteland just about to happen. 278 00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:10,360 And she talks about how these this vision of the wasteland doesn't. 279 00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:12,160 It actually obscures the reality, 280 00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:21,640 which is this that there were many environmental practises under socialism and that there was immense wastefulness on the part of capitalism. 281 00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:29,290 And so this and that capitalism, in fact, in the post socialist period destroys the environmental practises that were done. 282 00:36:29,290 --> 00:36:32,720 And we see this many times the destruction of many things. 283 00:36:32,720 --> 00:36:40,510 Juja delay as her colleagues have also explored these other things that have been destroyed. 284 00:36:40,510 --> 00:36:53,380 So this it would make sense then, that people would take on this category of emptiness because it is a hegemonic view of the terrain from, 285 00:36:53,380 --> 00:36:57,070 you know, about hegemonic, about socialism. 286 00:36:57,070 --> 00:37:07,450 And this view of really ruins a kind of wasteland legitimates the destruction of the landscape and then the legitimates the attempt, which is will. 287 00:37:07,450 --> 00:37:10,240 It always doesn't really happen, of course. 288 00:37:10,240 --> 00:37:18,670 But it is a fantasy of the tabula rasa in this tabula rasa that will allow for the flourishing of capitalism. 289 00:37:18,670 --> 00:37:28,420 But it also is a legitimation this is Galileo's work. That is, it sets in motion a call for purification also and the moral call for purification. 290 00:37:28,420 --> 00:37:31,810 But for other people and many people with the idea that the idea that there 291 00:37:31,810 --> 00:37:35,530 were ruins was like that was the basis on which you could create a new world. 292 00:37:35,530 --> 00:37:39,970 These ruins were not to be destroyed, but in fact used for the future. 293 00:37:39,970 --> 00:37:46,870 So and then when I just end with this guest, I said, I don't know if that's giving you. 294 00:37:46,870 --> 00:37:48,850 I don't know if you you would agree with this, 295 00:37:48,850 --> 00:37:58,300 but I was just we were using your book in my class and and you could if you step forward the idea that globalisation is a foreign implantation, 296 00:37:58,300 --> 00:38:01,780 it's like this war like Bambi that gets put into a city. 297 00:38:01,780 --> 00:38:09,760 And there's global cities have these and then there's like export processing zones and I'm sure banking sites and all these different 298 00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:16,720 groups of these foreign bodies implanted that are connected with each other and they suck out the capital and move it around. 299 00:38:16,720 --> 00:38:23,890 And so so we can tell she's just like things about globalisation as a foreign implantation. 300 00:38:23,890 --> 00:38:29,260 But we can also think of possibly then emptiness as a foreign implantation and it. 301 00:38:29,260 --> 00:38:39,430 Might come with its own social relations, it comes with its own not only the social relations that come from it, so it's actually not just a negative, 302 00:38:39,430 --> 00:38:47,560 but you know, and I think you guys are suggesting it's also has this not positive good but positive actual content. 303 00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:58,360 But it comes also and I think Martin was also talking about this and in his it's one of the blog posts I saw about also that brings its own ghosts, 304 00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:05,340 right? And so we could have the ghosts that come that are there in the locality and the ghosts that come with the emptiness. 305 00:39:05,340 --> 00:39:09,620 So I'm just suggesting that it's a possibility. Thank you. Yeah. 306 00:39:09,620 --> 00:39:17,590 Great. Great. Thank you so much. By way of sort of moving forward, maybe I'll just point out that actually, 307 00:39:17,590 --> 00:39:24,460 Johanna started answering the question that Saskia posed by by actually pointing out that what seemed to be the 308 00:39:24,460 --> 00:39:33,040 environmental destruction of the sort of Soviet modernity turned out to be not so bad was the capitalist one stepped in. 309 00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:40,360 And so interestingly, in some of my field sites, actually people think of Soviet Soviet modernity as secondary, 310 00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:45,490 both in terms of its sort of civilizational value, but also in terms of the force of its construction. 311 00:39:45,490 --> 00:39:51,640 So, for example, when Danish farmers moved into the rural Latvia and started establishing hog farms, 312 00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:55,540 the locals were complaining that they're incredibly environmentally destructive. 313 00:39:55,540 --> 00:40:02,320 And I said, Well, what about the Soviet farms? I mean, independence movements were built on environmental concerns, and they said, Oh no, 314 00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:10,060 the Soviets couldn't possibly do anything as bad as the new Danish, just as an anecdote. 315 00:40:10,060 --> 00:40:11,710 But thank you very much, Johanna. 316 00:40:11,710 --> 00:40:19,060 And indeed, I think that you're right that every place emptying or not has a certain configuration of emptying anonymity that we're looking at. 317 00:40:19,060 --> 00:40:26,380 So it's also comparatively within the actual locations themselves and that perhaps empty nest, even though there are, you know, 318 00:40:26,380 --> 00:40:32,560 this is a kind of a even a figure or coordinate in relation to which lives are crafted and unfolds, 319 00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:36,550 such as progress perhaps was, you know, in the midst of 20th century. 320 00:40:36,550 --> 00:40:37,570 So even if you're, 321 00:40:37,570 --> 00:40:46,270 let's say place is not emptying that prospect or that sort of is out there in relation to which you might have to think about your own life, 322 00:40:46,270 --> 00:40:52,390 but so much to discuss. And I will then ask Don to come in with his contribution. 323 00:40:52,390 --> 00:41:03,460 Thank you very much. So. Yeah, this is a fantastic topic, emptiness. 324 00:41:03,460 --> 00:41:09,910 I'm very happy you pick it up. I'm very happy you pick it up in a comparative way. 325 00:41:09,910 --> 00:41:19,810 I've walked through villages in eastern Estonia and exactly that feeling terrible emptiness, talking to people, people talking about emptiness. 326 00:41:19,810 --> 00:41:29,030 Everybody gone. Everything devalued. Only old people left. 327 00:41:29,030 --> 00:41:42,820 It is great that you do the comparative way by bringing in a conversation very explicitly with the Mediterranean in any case. 328 00:41:42,820 --> 00:41:49,850 I feel. Well, let me leave that aside. 329 00:41:49,850 --> 00:42:02,520 In fact, I think Mateusz Feldman's at the LHC was the first to use the concept of emptiness in two articles that he did for Fogle in 2002 and 2005. 330 00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:15,330 And this in the context of Georgian buildings and later in the context of the Kirklees revolution of 2005 two, I think. 331 00:42:15,330 --> 00:42:22,260 Later, he began to work on religious conversion, so that has also led to, 332 00:42:22,260 --> 00:42:28,210 say one potential theoretical empirical follow up after emptiness that is the sort of 333 00:42:28,210 --> 00:42:35,790 ideological or religious or mythological categories that emerge within that emptiness. 334 00:42:35,790 --> 00:42:46,800 I don't hear you talk enough about it, perhaps. And just perhaps also because you emphasise that the emptiness is so defined by its liminal adi is, 335 00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:55,710 of course, the conversion to a new type of religion or the shared emergence of new nationalism, 336 00:42:55,710 --> 00:43:04,710 which was very much the sort of way that I began dealing with it in an earlier stage is the end of the analogy. 337 00:43:04,710 --> 00:43:14,430 But nevertheless, I think it's important for you to show to be open for the potential politics that emerges within and against it now. 338 00:43:14,430 --> 00:43:26,340 So my own work, I don't think I ever use the term sheer here, my analytic concepts in explaining the rise of new nationalism in Eastern Europe. 339 00:43:26,340 --> 00:43:34,850 So let's say the authoritarian, illiberal right where dispossession and disenfranchisement. 340 00:43:34,850 --> 00:43:41,540 Increasingly, I have started to think about those processes and perhaps even more structurally, 341 00:43:41,540 --> 00:43:50,840 but also more culturally, in fact, dispossession and disenfranchisement of very short of dispossession. 342 00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:58,370 File Hafiz very clear political economic connotation, disenfranchisement if a political connotation. 343 00:43:58,370 --> 00:44:01,640 I thought about that more in terms of Tili, 344 00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:08,720 where increasingly large segments of electorates don't matter anymore and of course, don't vote anymore over time, 345 00:44:08,720 --> 00:44:14,110 because the notion of the public and the notion of public politics was increasingly neoliberal, 346 00:44:14,110 --> 00:44:28,560 liberalised and increasingly narrow and focussed on on monetary and economic orthodoxies, etc. the concept of devaluation. 347 00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:39,360 Links up well, there's perhaps a little bit more in terms of the way these processes are placed within value chains. 348 00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:49,010 We didn't tell you regimes in a rich anthropological sense of the term and the politics within and against that. 349 00:44:49,010 --> 00:44:52,210 Devaluation of increasingly. 350 00:44:52,210 --> 00:45:01,240 Talked about double devaluation, because devaluation again, might seem like a purely economic process that is, of course not the case. 351 00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:08,920 It's always a political economic process and it's a double devaluation because there's a discursive devaluation going on too, 352 00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,230 as we know everywhere in Eastern Europe. 353 00:45:11,230 --> 00:45:23,830 And perhaps in fact, in the in the in the Baltic states, this was always already more fiercely the case than everywhere else. 354 00:45:23,830 --> 00:45:29,480 Bolivia's new political elites were very, very. 355 00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:41,510 Bent on devaluing the past, but also devaluing the people who were mentioned to keep living in the past and showed a particular ideological set up 356 00:45:41,510 --> 00:45:50,240 and shelter in Eastern Europe that basically says down with all of us who are not ready to be winners of the transition. 357 00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:59,240 Now that sort of a politics, I call also a double devaluation in the sense that it is a continuous discursive attack on the common people, 358 00:45:59,240 --> 00:46:06,590 so to speak, and in particular, of course, on earlier generations who are not as well placed as as young, 359 00:46:06,590 --> 00:46:11,840 better educated people to respond to and to the devaluations that are going on. 360 00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:24,380 So double devaluation as a sort of concept, but I think can do a lot of both analytical as well as ethnographic and imaginary work. 361 00:46:24,380 --> 00:46:29,360 Now you're asking us about the limits of contemporary theories. 362 00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:34,340 Well, I don't think that we are so limited. 363 00:46:34,340 --> 00:46:49,270 I think we know a lot. The last 30 years has seen a fantastic global urban sociology social worker is, of course, the prime example of that. 364 00:46:49,270 --> 00:46:53,950 We've also seen a very intelligent, specialised Marxism. 365 00:46:53,950 --> 00:46:57,820 I don't want to name David Harvey here, but because it's much wider than him. 366 00:46:57,820 --> 00:47:04,570 But of course, he is the sort of icon for that. So specialised Marxism is a great critical geography. 367 00:47:04,570 --> 00:47:14,560 There's a political ecology that you can work with and that I would very much recommend working with because you are working to some extent, 368 00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:22,000 an allocation in a rural context with a lot of, you know, environment and nature and so on. 369 00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,890 And then there is the anthropological political economy which has worked with 370 00:47:26,890 --> 00:47:32,650 all the notion derive from that in a more ethnographic historical global way. 371 00:47:32,650 --> 00:47:43,070 Now, I think with all these. Two bodies of theoretical literature do. 372 00:47:43,070 --> 00:47:52,820 Is telling us that what we are seeing in your particular place is that experience themselves are becoming emptied out. 373 00:47:52,820 --> 00:47:58,820 Emptiness is that this is not an issue of disconnection. 374 00:47:58,820 --> 00:48:03,570 I think this is a very important theoretical point and a methodological point. 375 00:48:03,570 --> 00:48:06,620 So these are not disconnected places. 376 00:48:06,620 --> 00:48:16,220 These may be places where capitalism doesn't work for them and in the sense that revalued their productivity or devalues 377 00:48:16,220 --> 00:48:26,930 place territory of people and a particular version of social reproduction that are being that people are engaged in, 378 00:48:26,930 --> 00:48:36,680 it doesn't revalue them. But that, of course, is not a question of disconnection is precisely caused by its precise connexions, 379 00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:40,100 with kept its precise integrations within capitalism. 380 00:48:40,100 --> 00:48:48,410 So it's the massive devaluation that capital accumulation imposes on both socialist and post-Soviet places, 381 00:48:48,410 --> 00:48:54,920 perhaps more than anywhere else that produces this emptiness that might perhaps be more than anywhere else. 382 00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:59,030 Now, abandonment is a concept of another order. 383 00:48:59,030 --> 00:49:05,030 And I think Cisco will agree with me about that. Abandonment this is really about is about politics. 384 00:49:05,030 --> 00:49:10,580 It's about the potentialities of the state, the form of the state. So is there a capacity in place? 385 00:49:10,580 --> 00:49:18,950 Is there a mobilisation order alliances? Are there Connexions popular Connexions imaginary connexions being made between past 386 00:49:18,950 --> 00:49:24,650 presence and futures that allow a re-evaluation of people and places to go on? 387 00:49:24,650 --> 00:49:28,320 That is what abandonment is about neoliberalism or financial. 388 00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:41,330 Largely neoliberal, whatever you want to call it was always about yelling states and state elites, you know, abandon all those guys. 389 00:49:41,330 --> 00:49:50,900 And so the fight is really not about reconnecting with capitalism and capitalism, that you are perfectly connected. 390 00:49:50,900 --> 00:49:59,660 So it is really about creating forms of the state and those forms of the state's state are local, national, global and in the EU. 391 00:49:59,660 --> 00:50:02,050 Of course, this is a this is very multitude, 392 00:50:02,050 --> 00:50:10,970 the multi-stakeholder sort of process forms of the state that you can feed back into local form to social reproduction. 393 00:50:10,970 --> 00:50:20,400 How many minutes far left? I'm sorry, I was so drawn into what you were saying, I forgot to monitor. 394 00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:28,340 And you can just get a minute or so to that was also a drone in what I was saying. 395 00:50:28,340 --> 00:50:32,990 Mm hmm. Yeah. You know. 396 00:50:32,990 --> 00:50:39,000 I think. Yeah, OK, I want to say a couple of things about. 397 00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:52,770 Emptiness. And the politics within and against emptiness, uh, that can allow the re valuation and the Rockefeller recession of place and people. 398 00:50:52,770 --> 00:50:58,730 Now these are these are. Terribly integrated type of politics, right? 399 00:50:58,730 --> 00:51:05,300 And. It is not just a local politics that can do that, as you very well know, 400 00:51:05,300 --> 00:51:16,150 because all your local communities that you're working with in Latvia or in Ukraine or in the in post-war Bosnia Herzegovina. 401 00:51:16,150 --> 00:51:20,770 Are have have very little resources at all. 402 00:51:20,770 --> 00:51:32,390 So so this is something that is happening or must be happening or almost assured of multi scalar field of politics. 403 00:51:32,390 --> 00:51:38,020 And it is about monetary and it is about fiscal reform. It is about the state form. 404 00:51:38,020 --> 00:51:49,240 It is about creating new historical blocks that allow to to to short and vision a productive connexion between past, present and future. 405 00:51:49,240 --> 00:51:57,880 And it's about popular politics now is always about popular politics, that reverberation and devalues territories, 406 00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:04,660 spaces and people that have been abandoned by states and devalued by capital. 407 00:52:04,660 --> 00:52:10,570 There will always be. I am afraid, a sort of new nationalist possibility in there. 408 00:52:10,570 --> 00:52:14,800 And that is exactly, I think, what has happened in Central and Eastern Europe. 409 00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:26,370 So when I read your things? I think back of how I was travelling through many spaces in east east central Europe around, let's say, 410 00:52:26,370 --> 00:52:39,300 2000 2002 that were exactly being abandoned in with the speed and the drama and collapsing in the same way that you are now finding, 411 00:52:39,300 --> 00:52:51,370 let's say, a next point in the process. The rise of neo nationalists, author and populist. 412 00:52:51,370 --> 00:52:52,990 Politics, 413 00:52:52,990 --> 00:53:03,700 was there particular response at that moment in time and in led to from the mid 2000 onwards that was the case in Poland was the case in Hungary, 414 00:53:03,700 --> 00:53:08,770 a similar processes were happening, of course, in Bulgaria and Romania. 415 00:53:08,770 --> 00:53:13,570 I'm afraid that you need to bring in that central East European experience a 416 00:53:13,570 --> 00:53:17,890 little bit stronger because that might still be on the horizon for you too. 417 00:53:17,890 --> 00:53:27,000 And it's very different from the one that's happening in the Mediterranean. Last word on that. 418 00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:32,670 The biggest drama of your emptiness of is, of course, outmigration. 419 00:53:32,670 --> 00:53:36,750 And it's outmigration of the young, and they're the leaving behind of all the people. 420 00:53:36,750 --> 00:53:45,030 Now I am not so certain whether in this particular respect, you know, this is the son. 421 00:53:45,030 --> 00:53:54,150 The pensioners and the tourists in the south are really good comparison point for you in Latvia or in Ukraine, right? 422 00:53:54,150 --> 00:54:01,620 And so bringing back Central and Eastern Europe and its particularly historic experience over the last twenty five years is, 423 00:54:01,620 --> 00:54:07,530 I think, very important for us east of Poland, eastern Hungary, eastern Romania. 424 00:54:07,530 --> 00:54:13,350 Stop. Thank you very much. Very good. 425 00:54:13,350 --> 00:54:16,980 Yeah. Thank you very much indeed. I mean, thanks for bringing politics. 426 00:54:16,980 --> 00:54:22,230 What's interesting here and just just really one thing before we move on to Martin is that, of course, and for example, 427 00:54:22,230 --> 00:54:29,640 unlikely of what you would call neo nationalism or the right has been part of the government kind of already for a long time. 428 00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:33,570 So you don't have that sort of the populist frontier falls elsewhere. 429 00:54:33,570 --> 00:54:39,870 And in a way, you could sort of say there's a kind of empty politics of geopolitics happening in perhaps and luckily for sure, 430 00:54:39,870 --> 00:54:42,720 and nobody would be able to speak. 431 00:54:42,720 --> 00:54:49,290 So there's that aspect as well that I think we need to bring in and thinking about what are the political responses of the liberal there, 432 00:54:49,290 --> 00:54:57,900 perhaps in the lack of two to this sort of devaluation by capital and abandonment by the state, but incredibly rich insights? 433 00:54:57,900 --> 00:55:06,210 Thank you very much. And I'll move on to Martin now for his contribution. 434 00:55:06,210 --> 00:55:11,940 OK, thank you. Thank you. Can you all hear me? Yes. Perfect. 435 00:55:11,940 --> 00:55:14,880 So first of all, thank you for inviting me to this. 436 00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:26,940 I'm sorry that I wasn't able to hear the sessions earlier today, but it because it is a topic that I am really interested in. 437 00:55:26,940 --> 00:55:37,740 Unsurprisingly, I'm going to take my point of departure in talking about Georgia and something perhaps a little more empirical than the rest of you. 438 00:55:37,740 --> 00:55:50,040 But I will try to kind of end on some questions that can potentially be posed across sites in within this region and elsewhere. 439 00:55:50,040 --> 00:56:01,770 And I kind of took my cue from from from the title of the conference in terms of of ways of seeing oil and try to 440 00:56:01,770 --> 00:56:11,580 phrase it differently in terms of asking who's actually looking at these places and what are they looking at aside, 441 00:56:11,580 --> 00:56:18,250 of course, from from the local population? So who's who's looking in? 442 00:56:18,250 --> 00:56:20,950 And you could say, first of all, that there's always an anthropologist, 443 00:56:20,950 --> 00:56:24,490 no matter where you go, there's always an anthropologist looking at some things. 444 00:56:24,490 --> 00:56:28,990 So we can we can take that as that's the first one, but I'm not going to talk about that. 445 00:56:28,990 --> 00:56:35,530 Secondly, there are also always, in my experience, conceptual artists looking at these specific. 446 00:56:35,530 --> 00:56:43,360 So they're usually the first people you meet when you enter an abandoned building. 447 00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:51,580 But more importantly, and what I'll be leaning towards here is also the theme of this roundtable. 448 00:56:51,580 --> 00:56:59,110 So the question of the way the states and also private companies, for instance, 449 00:56:59,110 --> 00:57:07,600 look at places of abandonment or places that are kind of marked by emptiness. 450 00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:18,100 Mm-Hmm. And when when looking at certain areas and I think particularly in urban areas that have been marked by 451 00:57:18,100 --> 00:57:27,070 an emptiness or coastal areas marked by emotion is the gaze from the state or from investors is always, 452 00:57:27,070 --> 00:57:28,940 in a sense, aimed at another gaze. 453 00:57:28,940 --> 00:57:42,550 So it's aimed at creating a gaze at the place in in terms of tourism, which has certainly been the case brought in in Croatia and in in Georgia, 454 00:57:42,550 --> 00:57:51,630 where kind of visions of the future or the potential of tourism is kind of a layer upon particular sites that people 455 00:57:51,630 --> 00:58:03,730 or state or private sponsored investors kind of look at these potential layers of what tourism might be able to do, 456 00:58:03,730 --> 00:58:15,970 which I mean in in the case of Georgia, at least if we look at coastal regions has a certain logic to it because it has been in the Soviet area. 457 00:58:15,970 --> 00:58:24,280 So when Soviet era a place of tourism which went into decline in the 1990s and ended 458 00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:29,890 up in in the empty building buildings that Matisse felt once wrote about that. 459 00:58:29,890 --> 00:58:39,070 John also mentioned and the particular social lives that emerged in the late 90s around emptiness. 460 00:58:39,070 --> 00:58:43,480 But the gaze kind of came back after that, and particularly after the rose revolution, 461 00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:51,880 when when tourism and rebuilding became quite a massive political project in Georgia. 462 00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:58,060 And in many ways, they actually got rid of the empty buildings that Matisse was was writing about. 463 00:58:58,060 --> 00:59:04,300 They were reconstructed and rebuilt in different ways. 464 00:59:04,300 --> 00:59:10,720 So this kind of state gaze, at least a certain part of Georgia, 465 00:59:10,720 --> 00:59:26,140 has has often been a gaze that had included ideas about tourism as as kind of the mode of the way in which to counter a counter emptiness. 466 00:59:26,140 --> 00:59:36,760 Now, in more rural areas of Georgia and in the hinterlands, if we want to use those concepts, 467 00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:44,050 the situation has been very different and very similar at the same time. 468 00:59:44,050 --> 00:59:52,690 It's been very different in the sense that the state has not really had any interest in looking at certain places of Georgia. 469 00:59:52,690 --> 01:00:05,320 So the state gaze in a way has been very selective in terms of where it has seen any kind of potential, particularly when it comes to tourism. 470 01:00:05,320 --> 01:00:15,130 So what the state after the revolution, in a sense tried to reconstruct were the places that have already been tourist sites beforehand, 471 01:00:15,130 --> 01:00:21,700 whereas places that didn't really have any prior history of tourism were often 472 01:00:21,700 --> 01:00:27,370 overlooked and particularly places where you could say kind of material. 473 01:00:27,370 --> 01:00:30,250 Soviet legacies have been abundant. 474 01:00:30,250 --> 01:00:43,900 So plain places of deindustrialisation, for instance, or empty factories and villages related to them have not really come into focus. 475 01:00:43,900 --> 01:00:52,420 And I would say in relation to what Saskia was mentioning, I mean places that are basically also slightly toxic landscapes now, 476 01:00:52,420 --> 01:00:59,290 which the state has not really paid attention to, essentially because it costs a lot of money. 477 01:00:59,290 --> 01:01:04,510 If you want to turn a toxic landscape into a site for tourism. 478 01:01:04,510 --> 01:01:09,820 So there are places that are really overlooked, both by private investors and the state, 479 01:01:09,820 --> 01:01:15,890 which makes it very different from these coastal regions or regions that have or places in Georgia that. 480 01:01:15,890 --> 01:01:19,730 I have had a prior history with tourism. 481 01:01:19,730 --> 01:01:29,570 But at the same time, there is a very clear similarity, at least when you start talking to the local population. 482 01:01:29,570 --> 01:01:37,070 In my experience, at least in the villages of lupins anarchy in western Georgia, 483 01:01:37,070 --> 01:01:46,190 where the idea of tourism continues to be strong, even though tourism has never really been there. 484 01:01:46,190 --> 01:01:53,840 So whenever a conversation has started about what could be done to counter emptiness, 485 01:01:53,840 --> 01:02:02,060 what could be done to counter the population, youth migration, deindustrialisation and decline in agriculture? 486 01:02:02,060 --> 01:02:09,980 The conversation rarely comes to the question of whether we could try to bring back industry or we could try to have more agriculture. 487 01:02:09,980 --> 01:02:14,300 We could try to keep the youth somehow in the city or in the village. 488 01:02:14,300 --> 01:02:19,910 It always goes into a conversation about what about tourism? 489 01:02:19,910 --> 01:02:25,460 What could we do to attract tourism to this particular village? 490 01:02:25,460 --> 01:02:33,920 And it also often leads to a discussion about uncertainty in terms of what people can actually see, 491 01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:41,330 because often there is actually very little to see there, aside from a relatively pristine landscape. 492 01:02:41,330 --> 01:02:53,480 But we would say Georgia is blessed with quite wonderful landscapes, so it takes some effort from the landscape to to attract tourists. 493 01:02:53,480 --> 01:03:00,600 So there is this strange duality where, on the one hand, 494 01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:11,600 the state and these kind of historical aspects of of tourism are not really present in these sites. 495 01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:17,350 And at the same time, it is actually what people are often wanting or what they are yearning for, 496 01:03:17,350 --> 01:03:26,180 or what they to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Tasmanian to see as a fantasy of salvation. 497 01:03:26,180 --> 01:03:33,230 And it was interesting, Don, that you mentioned that this question of nationalism in Central Europe, 498 01:03:33,230 --> 01:03:40,520 because that was what Tasmania was originally writing about that after the nineties, 499 01:03:40,520 --> 01:03:51,500 nationalism kind of became a fantasy of salvation in this particular this particular region, which is why a lot of people turned roots. 500 01:03:51,500 --> 01:04:00,080 So I think there is something interesting in also looking at that political aspect in in in Eastern Europe or in different sites, 501 01:04:00,080 --> 01:04:11,420 but also in looking at what other fantasies actually emerge along with its abandonment and emptiness, 502 01:04:11,420 --> 01:04:19,340 where in Georgia, at least tourism increasingly kind of becomes the default fantasy. 503 01:04:19,340 --> 01:04:26,090 So whenever something has to be solved, tourism comes up as a potential answer, 504 01:04:26,090 --> 01:04:32,900 even though it hasn't really materialised or it isn't materialised yet. 505 01:04:32,900 --> 01:04:38,390 So. In terms of kind of posing broader questions, because a lot of this, of course, 506 01:04:38,390 --> 01:04:50,120 is bound to go to the context of George and the particular history of tourism in Georgia and the history of the state in Georgia. 507 01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:55,790 But I think returning to what Thatcher talked about in the beginning about these relational aspects, 508 01:04:55,790 --> 01:05:07,340 I think there is something interesting in terms of looking at how local populations also think relationally across scales. 509 01:05:07,340 --> 01:05:16,730 So the ways in which local villages, villages in Georgia look at other places in Georgia as kind of sites for inspiration, 510 01:05:16,730 --> 01:05:26,930 or they look to the coast because things were working there in terms of saying, how can we actually work with emptiness in the place that we in? 511 01:05:26,930 --> 01:05:32,940 And that kind of returns also you and that's what you were talking about comparison in general. 512 01:05:32,940 --> 01:05:37,400 And I'm not seeing it, just I think as a theoretical question, 513 01:05:37,400 --> 01:05:50,150 but also a methodological question in asking what do people actually compare themselves or their place with in a context of emptiness? 514 01:05:50,150 --> 01:06:01,960 And related to that which spatial fantasies emerge across sites in these different places? 515 01:06:01,960 --> 01:06:05,890 Yes, I think that was it. Very good. 516 01:06:05,890 --> 01:06:08,650 Thank you very much indeed. 517 01:06:08,650 --> 01:06:17,500 You've sort of ended you add that to who else is looking in in the empty buildings are empty places after the conceptual artist it is. 518 01:06:17,500 --> 01:06:23,890 It is also actually dark tourist or or sort of people who seek out these places specifically for tourism. 519 01:06:23,890 --> 01:06:30,010 And it's an interesting actually thing when sort of places and people devalued by capital, 520 01:06:30,010 --> 01:06:35,450 abandoned by the state themselves become a kind of a commodity to be consumed in that sense. 521 01:06:35,450 --> 01:06:41,140 So that, I think are extremely interesting note to to end on. 522 01:06:41,140 --> 01:06:45,520 I will ask you now who will tell you what will follow. 523 01:06:45,520 --> 01:06:52,570 We'll ask whether he wants to see kind of a few observations of following your your contributions. 524 01:06:52,570 --> 01:07:02,770 And then I will ask you perhaps each to speak to you, each other's contributions and what you heard and then and then open up to questions. 525 01:07:02,770 --> 01:07:09,340 I can try to turn on your microphone there. Let me just try and then quickly say something. 526 01:07:09,340 --> 01:07:13,700 It's on and see you. Do you hear me? Can you hear him? 527 01:07:13,700 --> 01:07:19,260 Yeah, thing. Right? Well, thank you very much. 528 01:07:19,260 --> 01:07:39,080 It's exactly. This is exactly what we wanted with this roundtable, a really rich and insightful flow of reactions to our. 529 01:07:39,080 --> 01:07:57,920 Initial. Initial concerns that we that you faced, and I would say that we will have a lot to think about and answering, 530 01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:05,180 probably I'll briefly answer the questions that were both from you to ask for. 531 01:08:05,180 --> 01:08:16,450 First of all, from Saskia, whether we encounter spaces that are that are just destroyed or depleted. 532 01:08:16,450 --> 01:08:24,380 This is definitely the case and this is something that I somehow missed my in designing my fieldwork. 533 01:08:24,380 --> 01:08:37,650 And this this is the spaces that that are now undergoing desertification in the in the south, in the in the northern. 534 01:08:37,650 --> 01:08:46,890 And the laws of Black Sea and in the area that stretches from Caspian to the Black Sea. 535 01:08:46,890 --> 01:08:58,880 And this is really something to be taken into account and it's it's been a result of a kind of. 536 01:08:58,880 --> 01:09:08,900 US mismanaged investment projects into reviving agriculture. 537 01:09:08,900 --> 01:09:20,270 Four, four, four gone. You are completely right that that I probably overemphasised detachment and absolute mess of 538 01:09:20,270 --> 01:09:30,290 some types of abandonment and looking at the double devaluation would bring more dynamic, 539 01:09:30,290 --> 01:09:38,570 more dynamism in in our comparative design, which. 540 01:09:38,570 --> 01:09:44,470 Which brings me to Joanna's remark about. 541 01:09:44,470 --> 01:10:00,510 That we need we need to exert a bit mechanical or counter control position of cases and take into consideration the. 542 01:10:00,510 --> 01:10:11,290 There are calls our relations and the probably the movement of mythologies and. 543 01:10:11,290 --> 01:10:30,210 And the processes of. Sociality amongst amongst our cases in general. 544 01:10:30,210 --> 01:10:38,710 Did this this contributes to talk to a potential reworking of some of our hypotheses, 545 01:10:38,710 --> 01:10:46,990 and now I think we should move to and we should encourage you to. 546 01:10:46,990 --> 01:10:55,630 We will we will. I just want to add to that that in a way that's with how we think about comparison is also something that we're actually 547 01:10:55,630 --> 01:11:02,680 working on and what actually a collaborative comparison means so that we often don't think of these different fields, 548 01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:13,060 such as cases, but we move laterally from one to the other in the process of which actually the the object of analysis itself may change. 549 01:11:13,060 --> 01:11:17,110 So we're really sort of allowing for, on the one hand, thinking about what you might be saying, 550 01:11:17,110 --> 01:11:20,080 what you sort of said, underlying structures or reality, 551 01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:29,350 but also, on the other hand, allowing the kind of transformation of the object that we're looking at as we move from one field site to the other. 552 01:11:29,350 --> 01:11:31,720 And yes, so actually, 553 01:11:31,720 --> 01:11:45,010 I think this is this is a good moment to to ask you to sort of see who wants to perhaps be the first to to reflect on on on what we've heard. 554 01:11:45,010 --> 01:11:53,560 I thought this was absolutely fascinating stuff that you have developed and I'm not very familiar with your area. 555 01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:57,040 I have been there several times, but still so. 556 01:11:57,040 --> 01:12:06,940 So what I'm interested in understanding is whether on the growth question, you know, growth, which can be both positive and negative. 557 01:12:06,940 --> 01:12:13,540 But the area that you are describing is that a flourishing area? 558 01:12:13,540 --> 01:12:17,860 Is that an area where a lot of the water bodies have been poisoned? 559 01:12:17,860 --> 01:12:24,070 You know, what are the specifics? Because when you look, for instance, in the Americas, the Americas, as I said, 560 01:12:24,070 --> 01:12:30,220 one of the most brutal zones when it comes to how we protect environments in the Americas, 561 01:12:30,220 --> 01:12:38,410 we have destroyed an enormous amount of trees of water bodies, you name it. 562 01:12:38,410 --> 01:12:44,710 I'm just curious. And the Americas, of course, is huge, vast and quite empty. 563 01:12:44,710 --> 01:12:51,490 And so I'm curious to understand your area because your area is not so big. 564 01:12:51,490 --> 01:12:58,630 You have quite a quite a population there, too. You also had some abandoned or semi abandoned cities. 565 01:12:58,630 --> 01:13:06,670 What what is what is emerging as something that is different from your past? 566 01:13:06,670 --> 01:13:15,580 Is there something like that? I mean, I thought I heard a few elements there that signal that I don't know if I'm clear in what. 567 01:13:15,580 --> 01:13:21,880 Yeah. Anybody. 568 01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:29,820 So just to help them, but please join people, we're all, I suppose, in some way connected to our area. 569 01:13:29,820 --> 01:13:35,760 But in the sense you're talking about the land, you really talking about sort of floods, about environmental issues as well. 570 01:13:35,760 --> 01:13:41,520 And so I mean, of course, you know, there are there the species variegated in a sense, 571 01:13:41,520 --> 01:13:45,390 there's Chernobyl, of course, but you know that that you've heard of. 572 01:13:45,390 --> 01:13:55,290 But but what is there? Yeah, the the new things, you know that we could sort of say what's new that's emerging is that, you know, 573 01:13:55,290 --> 01:14:02,970 one is that what used to be an intensively industrialised country site is being industrialised. 574 01:14:02,970 --> 01:14:05,670 And again, this is contested. It's is it. Is it the good? 575 01:14:05,670 --> 01:14:14,310 Is it bad if you're looking from the perspective of of people who kind of lived Soviet modernity, not just as industrialisation, 576 01:14:14,310 --> 01:14:18,540 but also as a bundle of services of social relations, of accessibility, 577 01:14:18,540 --> 01:14:23,730 mobility, all kinds of things and are now living a deindustrialisation for them. 578 01:14:23,730 --> 01:14:28,470 This is a really radical change for them. In particular, they are. 579 01:14:28,470 --> 01:14:37,350 They basically in one location where I work, people describe it to similar to to World War, to the undoing of things that they are experiencing now. 580 01:14:37,350 --> 01:14:41,070 Of course, if you look from kind of a more birdseye psychological perspective, 581 01:14:41,070 --> 01:14:48,330 perhaps from the perspective of the universal subject that in a way you invoke, we can sort of think, OK, so let's industrialisation. 582 01:14:48,330 --> 01:14:53,550 There's perhaps reforestation or there is, which is not necessarily purposeful. 583 01:14:53,550 --> 01:15:03,720 It just kind of can be nature reclaiming as it were the spaces or some of some of the former residential spaces turned into agricultural lands. 584 01:15:03,720 --> 01:15:07,560 And then of course, also, of course, that Don mentioned emigration where basically, 585 01:15:07,560 --> 01:15:14,250 for example, Latvia has lost twenty seven percent of its population in the last 30 years. 586 01:15:14,250 --> 01:15:18,690 Various various forms of migration. So again, it really depends. 587 01:15:18,690 --> 01:15:22,890 And it's not all relative, you know, something you know, depends on which perspective we look at, 588 01:15:22,890 --> 01:15:33,870 but it is kind of one where much has to ask who who is experiencing this, this kind of what counts as destruction and for whom. 589 01:15:33,870 --> 01:15:41,550 But I'll perhaps allow the other panellists to comment on this. 590 01:15:41,550 --> 01:15:47,290 Well, I asked some questions, and so I heard some thoughts. And Saskia, 591 01:15:47,290 --> 01:15:54,210 I was wondering about whether you would see your theories of expulsion as working well 592 01:15:54,210 --> 01:16:00,390 with this idea of emptiness or do you think there's something missing in that way? 593 01:16:00,390 --> 01:16:03,810 I just have just one of the two other questions for Don. 594 01:16:03,810 --> 01:16:05,370 I just wondering about this. 595 01:16:05,370 --> 01:16:12,940 I totally agree about this is not a disconnection, and I like that idea and I was wondering if, but there is some kind of. 596 01:16:12,940 --> 01:16:19,270 Disconnecting and reconnecting, going on into a new place in the world system or something, I would might say, 597 01:16:19,270 --> 01:16:26,110 so I'm wondering what you think about that there is some disconnecting or reconnecting, but it's still connected. 598 01:16:26,110 --> 01:16:32,860 So I just wanted to share their thoughts on that. And Martin, you have great your questions that you brought up in your presentation are fabulous. 599 01:16:32,860 --> 01:16:45,040 And I really how do we relate the idea that how people compare with they compare themselves to and our comparisons as as scholars? 600 01:16:45,040 --> 01:16:52,440 How do those relate in some way is interesting to me. So thanks. 601 01:16:52,440 --> 01:17:00,830 Just start. Dan, go ahead. I talking to me. 602 01:17:00,830 --> 01:17:06,160 I was looking at who will raise their hand, so who's ready to go? I thought Don Hand, but yeah. 603 01:17:06,160 --> 01:17:15,550 And then in whichever order? Yeah, yeah. I could go ahead. 604 01:17:15,550 --> 01:17:23,980 Yeah. OK, talk a little bit more about about the actual integrated ness of any place in Central and Eastern Europe, 605 01:17:23,980 --> 01:17:28,540 but also any place in that space in the global economy. 606 01:17:28,540 --> 01:17:34,240 I mean, if you if you integrate into the global value regime. 607 01:17:34,240 --> 01:17:42,520 Meaning that you can migrate. And that your labour has a particular value within that. 608 01:17:42,520 --> 01:17:48,800 Track migration that you're wrong. And that the costs of living, 609 01:17:48,800 --> 01:17:54,950 the costs of your food and the cost of your social reproduction is not determined by any local 610 01:17:54,950 --> 01:18:02,000 production primarily but primarily by the global value regime and its regional instantiation, 611 01:18:02,000 --> 01:18:09,020 so to speak. You are perfectly integrated, you are perfectly integrated when your state is indebted and has an account 612 01:18:09,020 --> 01:18:14,030 with the IMF and they tell you to cut down on this and this and this and that, 613 01:18:14,030 --> 01:18:25,980 and then you become abandoned. Right. That's perfect. Integration social is really very important to think about capitalism, not as a national thing. 614 01:18:25,980 --> 01:18:33,240 That will always work for you, because as as regional researchers on socialism, 615 01:18:33,240 --> 01:18:41,670 we know that the new nationalist analysis of capitalism has always been that we want real capitalism. 616 01:18:41,670 --> 01:18:48,810 We we haven't gotten it yet because it's run by the by the Communists, by the Communists. 617 01:18:48,810 --> 01:18:55,260 And so it's corrupt. And now we finally want a transparent, liberal, real capitalism. 618 01:18:55,260 --> 01:19:03,750 But the point is, it's always been a real capitalism and nobody was ideologically prepared to see it. 619 01:19:03,750 --> 01:19:09,390 And that is true for the elites, political elites, as well as the wider population, 620 01:19:09,390 --> 01:19:14,280 so that this is the drama of Central and Eastern Europe that they have been 621 01:19:14,280 --> 01:19:21,060 told between 1945 or earlier in 1989 that something like capitalism existed, 622 01:19:21,060 --> 01:19:28,540 which can be bad. Nobody believed it at the end. And then it came and nobody could see it. 623 01:19:28,540 --> 01:19:37,900 In this particular regional instantiation, which meant drastic devaluation of any infrastructure, build up skills, 624 01:19:37,900 --> 01:19:44,650 build up people build up right and show that has been going on so that on a very 625 01:19:44,650 --> 01:19:49,960 general level about about integration into capitalism and this other regime, 626 01:19:49,960 --> 01:19:54,430 I've had all discussion, I think with Greece, the Harper in Bolaji, 627 01:19:54,430 --> 01:20:04,060 who I think builds on on on James Ferguson, that all of this was about disconnection. 628 01:20:04,060 --> 01:20:12,520 If capitalism doesn't work for you because it doesn't value you and it doesn't become productive in your social reproduction, 629 01:20:12,520 --> 01:20:18,250 it doesn't mean that you are not in capitalism. It means that you are being devalued fruitlessly by capital. 630 01:20:18,250 --> 01:20:22,320 Right? And so, so that's been going on. Yes. 631 01:20:22,320 --> 01:20:30,040 Yeah. Look, I think and this will show, I think it's an answer or perhaps a bit of an answer to Solskjaer's point. 632 01:20:30,040 --> 01:20:40,270 I actually think that there are there are enormous potential resources in central eastern Europe and in the post-Soviet space, and they are natural. 633 01:20:40,270 --> 01:20:48,760 They are about forests. They are about all sorts of commons that are, of course, always being quasi or fully privatised or in the process of but. 634 01:20:48,760 --> 01:20:55,600 But it isn't very often it doesn't really happen because it doesn't get commercialised, 635 01:20:55,600 --> 01:21:04,660 even though it is commodified entirely, but nobody buying it up. 636 01:21:04,660 --> 01:21:08,660 A very simple example on this, and this is about good advice. 637 01:21:08,660 --> 01:21:14,240 So I was living for it for 15 years and a neighbourhood in Budapest. 638 01:21:14,240 --> 01:21:22,760 Well, like everywhere else and goodbye, but this was a relative, this was not a district, especially in a way, a flourishing district within Budapest. 639 01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:28,490 The 30s. And but there were so many empty first floor. 640 01:21:28,490 --> 01:21:37,460 So in 2008 or something when you were walking through the streets, every fourth or fifth potential shop, 641 01:21:37,460 --> 01:21:43,520 restaurant or living space was just empty and had been empty for years. 642 01:21:43,520 --> 01:21:50,270 And now, at some point, the new mayor decides that we're going to make a list of all these places. 643 01:21:50,270 --> 01:21:55,580 We're going to claim them and we're going to give them to people who do something with them as simple as that. 644 01:21:55,580 --> 01:21:59,600 And it was an enormous change in the neighbourhood. 645 01:21:59,600 --> 01:22:11,200 And, you know, the kindergartens, all sorts of social spaces emerged, the artists, etc., etc. So. 646 01:22:11,200 --> 01:22:14,090 So yeah, and this is an urban example. 647 01:22:14,090 --> 01:22:21,260 And of course, it is more difficult to envision examples like that in spaces where people have left on a massive scale, 648 01:22:21,260 --> 01:22:30,500 which was, of course not the case of Budapest. So. So the spaces in in eastern Latvia are, of course, much more difficult to envision. 649 01:22:30,500 --> 01:22:38,000 And then, yeah. And as Martin says, immediately, the phantasmagoria tourist emerges. 650 01:22:38,000 --> 01:22:44,870 Right. Because the tourist is the placeholder for somebody who actually brings not real capital, 651 01:22:44,870 --> 01:22:53,750 but a bit of money in it and can actually buy things and sort of support social reproduction of places and people in a broader sense. 652 01:22:53,750 --> 01:23:01,460 So that is a mythic solution, which works in some cases. And of course, you can make politics work in that direction, too. 653 01:23:01,460 --> 01:23:11,660 And the EU is not so bad that it actually making a little bit of politics possible, enabling it, giving a little bit of money, et cetera, et cetera. 654 01:23:11,660 --> 01:23:21,170 So, you know, these are my my quick thoughts about connexion capitalism devaluation, a revaluation. 655 01:23:21,170 --> 01:23:29,690 I think Eastern Europe has a lot of potential. And I am afraid that for a little while, it was the new nationalists. 656 01:23:29,690 --> 01:23:37,020 It was the Orban in which it was Jobbik and used in Hungary who saw the chances of actually doing that. 657 01:23:37,020 --> 01:23:43,640 Social Democrats were totally out of it. Totally new liberalised when we need communism. 658 01:23:43,640 --> 01:23:48,560 South. Maybe you want to come in on that one? 659 01:23:48,560 --> 01:24:01,100 Well, I mean, but one question that I have and there is no easy or at least self-evident answer is have we entered a new level? 660 01:24:01,100 --> 01:24:10,070 And given all the buildings we have, et cetera, et cetera, entering a new epoch may well not be a visual event in terms of, 661 01:24:10,070 --> 01:24:15,650 you know, changes in the architecture in who lives where, etc. 662 01:24:15,650 --> 01:24:22,520 And so the question then is what are the instruments that we actually need to develop in order to 663 01:24:22,520 --> 01:24:29,960 capture certain types of transformations where the visual order everything looks more or less the same, 664 01:24:29,960 --> 01:24:32,510 some might be emptier than others, et cetera. 665 01:24:32,510 --> 01:24:39,740 But still, there it is, the housing and the, you know, the the what, the economic centres and all of that. 666 01:24:39,740 --> 01:24:52,010 And so and of course, thinking also from the perspective of the Americas, which the Americas have vast empty nurses, there's a lot of empty. 667 01:24:52,010 --> 01:24:56,570 I don't mean I mean empty land. I don't mean empty buildings. I mean empty land. 668 01:24:56,570 --> 01:25:08,420 And so then you you you sort of begin to think about the concentration of people takes has taken, historically speaking, place in very specific areas. 669 01:25:08,420 --> 01:25:14,960 And and in many ways, we have not studied many of those areas sufficiently. 670 01:25:14,960 --> 01:25:20,390 And I think the area that we're discussing here is also part of that. 671 01:25:20,390 --> 01:25:27,230 There is a long history there, a long history, not a little history, a long history. 672 01:25:27,230 --> 01:25:36,650 And and still, we in the West, for instance, don't totally understand how that has evolved. 673 01:25:36,650 --> 01:25:46,490 And so I'm sort of interested in a little question, really, which is the differences, you know, so we have certain instruments for building, you know, 674 01:25:46,490 --> 01:25:56,720 they may be rather generic nowadays, we all more or less know what needs to be done, etc., etc. The where is the depth of depth of the difference? 675 01:25:56,720 --> 01:26:02,390 Because I think that your region is really a very particular kind of region. 676 01:26:02,390 --> 01:26:11,930 It's different from where I grew up in Argentina, where there was so much empty left, you know that it was like, unbelievable. 677 01:26:11,930 --> 01:26:17,790 That's where my parents went. Also there, because all that empty land, you know, a huge continent, 678 01:26:17,790 --> 01:26:31,860 really huge area and and so I've just I just it is something that I still want to hear more about, about your region and and what is it, you know? 679 01:26:31,860 --> 01:26:35,520 Or is it full of people and we just can't see it? 680 01:26:35,520 --> 01:26:44,070 You know, I think that's why that's actually, I mean, this is exactly what we also sort of trying to to to work towards. 681 01:26:44,070 --> 01:26:50,580 And I think that's why they gave me money to try to answer your question and we're just at the beginning of this. 682 01:26:50,580 --> 01:26:55,290 But I agree that and this is kind of what we're trying to do is develop this methodology. 683 01:26:55,290 --> 01:27:02,220 We think as you do that there's actually something a difference that we're trying to to to capture. 684 01:27:02,220 --> 01:27:09,660 But this is this is going to going to have to happen in the next few years and will definitely get back to you on that one. 685 01:27:09,660 --> 01:27:15,030 But Martin, we have I'm told that we have about five minutes left. 686 01:27:15,030 --> 01:27:17,880 I'm sorry to all the people out there who wanted to ask questions. 687 01:27:17,880 --> 01:27:24,270 Maybe you can put them in the chat and we'll see them because this link remains live throughout the conference so they can actually, 688 01:27:24,270 --> 01:27:29,730 the questions will be visible and we will try to perhaps engage them as we move on. 689 01:27:29,730 --> 01:27:44,540 So I'll give Martin. The next floor to Martin, yet just to come and pick up on some of it is like, I agree with you says that there is a new epoch. 690 01:27:44,540 --> 01:27:49,100 I mean, it is kind of the Anthropocene era that we're living in, which does have consequences. 691 01:27:49,100 --> 01:27:56,390 And I think it's also interesting to to examine in relation to, uh, to emptiness. 692 01:27:56,390 --> 01:28:01,190 And also, I mean, for us, a project to really see, I mean, 693 01:28:01,190 --> 01:28:09,170 which which comparative axes can you actually find both within the region but also with other places? 694 01:28:09,170 --> 01:28:19,040 Because I think when I compare my own material, I mean, I've only just begun conducting fieldwork in Denmark for four COVID related reasons. 695 01:28:19,040 --> 01:28:27,080 But but in communities in Denmark, people are horrified by the idea of tourists, of more tourists coming. 696 01:28:27,080 --> 01:28:30,980 So emptiness is cherished in the completely different way. 697 01:28:30,980 --> 01:28:40,160 But the main reason for that is, I think, because the local population can afford to be horrified by that idea. 698 01:28:40,160 --> 01:28:52,190 So I mean, they don't need the tourists, and that is a very, very big difference from these local communities in in Georgia or in Croatia. 699 01:28:52,190 --> 01:29:01,760 But I do think it would be interesting to also ask, I mean, who in the regions that we're studying in Eastern Europe, actually then I mean, 700 01:29:01,760 --> 01:29:09,170 who see emptiness as a positive trait because there are also some who actually like the emptiness that surround them. 701 01:29:09,170 --> 01:29:15,230 And I think particularly in Croatia, I know that a lot of people have been really happy that tourists haven't been 702 01:29:15,230 --> 01:29:20,100 coming because they can suddenly see their place in a completely different way. 703 01:29:20,100 --> 01:29:29,330 So I mean, there is a tendency to see emptiness as kind of an inherent negative aspect of a place. 704 01:29:29,330 --> 01:29:36,200 But I think that something fruitful and also asking what are the positive traits of emptiness in a given site? 705 01:29:36,200 --> 01:29:44,190 Exactly, yes. Right? That final point? Yes. Yeah. 706 01:29:44,190 --> 01:29:52,140 Yes. I mean, indeed. And that's that's I think that one way we were thought of is that we also saw kind of a 707 01:29:52,140 --> 01:29:57,030 almost an instant as soon as someone started perceiving emptiness as something negative, 708 01:29:57,030 --> 01:30:03,630 there was the instant kind of reaction to it is let's or it is also possible to see it as a positive. 709 01:30:03,630 --> 01:30:09,900 So it's an interesting kind of dynamic that emerges in relation to observations or discourses of emptiness. 710 01:30:09,900 --> 01:30:13,230 And the one one thing we wanted to do is to actually pause and think, 711 01:30:13,230 --> 01:30:20,610 OK before we assign value to what we're seeing, trying to understand it in a kind of a more in-depth way. 712 01:30:20,610 --> 01:30:22,440 But that in itself is interesting. 713 01:30:22,440 --> 01:30:29,640 Maybe there is no neutral space sort of from which to see it, of course, was sort of a pause or a kind of a liminal space, 714 01:30:29,640 --> 01:30:35,730 but rather that these valuations are competing with each other as a sort of in a certain politics of emptiness. 715 01:30:35,730 --> 01:30:40,860 I have to thank you all so very much. I really feel like I should. 716 01:30:40,860 --> 01:30:45,180 We should have planned this to be twice as long than than it was. 717 01:30:45,180 --> 01:30:51,060 I hope that you will be able to stay on and listen to some of the sessions as well. 718 01:30:51,060 --> 01:31:00,180 And this this roundtable was recorded and will be also then available for viewing to conference participants at a later time, 719 01:31:00,180 --> 01:31:06,300 but also possibly elsewhere. So thank you very much and please keep entering your questions. 720 01:31:06,300 --> 01:31:07,290 I see that they're there, 721 01:31:07,290 --> 01:31:15,850 and the roundtable participants can actually read the questions and perhaps answer them if they feel inclined in brief responses. 722 01:31:15,850 --> 01:31:22,050 And I'm sorry, we didn't get to actually asking the questions. Am I correct, Michel, that we're out of time? 723 01:31:22,050 --> 01:31:28,260 I'm afraid we are 15 minutes, including the caption. 724 01:31:28,260 --> 01:31:33,750 OK. OK. Trying to keep up with everyone. Sounds good. 725 01:31:33,750 --> 01:31:46,220 Well, thank you very much. And please. I think it's a 15 minute screen break and and but please stay on and and join us for the next panel around. 726 01:31:46,220 --> 01:31:55,689 OK, thank you. Thank you.