In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing ... more In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Formerly industrial and infrastructural landscapes have been both materially and semantically reshaped through practices of restoration and attempts to revitalise ruins of failed modernisation projects. Around a socialist-era empty lake, landowners, real estate developers, casino capitalism, displaced people, hopes, fantasies, wild and stray animals converged, creating a differentially ordered landscape in an antagonistically articulated coexistence of wastelands and nature. V ac arești Nature Park developed a specific historical and social trajectory, as it became closely related with local middle-class projects and anxieties. In it, socialist ruins came into direct, sensuous contact with both nature and the fractured history of post-1990s Bucharest capitalism, enacting a twin infrastructural and ecological inversion.
Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of ... more Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public administrators, and military elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenţia and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project.
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 2017
After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National pa... more After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National parks came into being as part of a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Scholarly efforts to understand national parks rely either on arguments about the social construction of nature or on political ecology. In this article, I attempt to point to the analytical potential of the literature on ruins for expanding studies carried out in both theoretical traditions. I draw from fieldwork in nature conservation areas in southeastern Romania to explore how actors gain access to critical discourses and complex ways of narrating and enrolling the landscapes. The mechanisms that counterpoise safeguarding and development are analyzed as parts of a longue durée articulation of ruination and modernization.
The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of... more The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of quarantinist outposts against the last waves of plague and the first waves of cholera. The crisis of this sanitary arrangement opened the way for a series of failed but productive projects of modernization. The collective political body was imagined and created through the nationalization of the medical profession and the attempts to create a sanitary social body. The failure to connect urban and rural bodies inside a democratic all-embracing network opened up spaces for discourses questioning the identity of the collective body. Was there a “Romanian element”? What did that mean and was it degenerating? Demographic anti-Semitism and the first attempts to think of socioeconomic and sanitary failures in terms of racial degeneracy emerged from the fissures of the national sanitary system. Bacteriology was able to partially absorb these critiques and propose a larger interventionist projec...
The issue of the various interconnections between the discourses on national self and leftist ide... more The issue of the various interconnections between the discourses on national self and leftist ideologies has long been an important part of the theoretical preoccupations regarding Central and Eastern Europe. The argument of Anton Allahar’s paper is developed in terms of class consciousness and false consciousness and explores their role in the creation of ethnic entrepreneurs and, implicitly, of ethno-nationalism. However, what is missing is the coupling of the analysis of the formation of subjectivities – ethnic and national – with the analysis of the context they are built in.
The connections between "the Humboldtian tradition" and very important cultural layers of the Eur... more The connections between "the Humboldtian tradition" and very important cultural layers of the European anti-Enlightenment movement can provide a powerful alternative to the mainstream(s) in today's social sciences. This tradition should be seen, though, in its concrete historicity and the political and theoretical blind spots which are part of this tradition ought to be carefully reconsidered. This anthropological tradition can be "unpacked" by bringing it closer to other theoretical trends which try to address modernity's inconsistencies and lack of unity (such as the one entailed by the thesis of the "different modernities")-in order to deconstruct its national closure and its administrative and state oriented background. One of the geographical, historical and social areas where alternative modernities (especially in their radical, "Christian Orthodox" guise), and Humboldtian traditions seem to intersect each other is the East European peasantry.
The Csangos are an ethnic/religious minority from Moldavia, Eastern Romania. They are defined as ... more The Csangos are an ethnic/religious minority from Moldavia, Eastern Romania. They are defined as legitimate subjects by two antagonistically nationalizing projects: the Hungarian and the Romanian one. I am not trying to discover some "authentic" or "hybrid" identity that would explain away the ambiguities connected with this ethno-religious group. The Csangos appear, in this paper, as mutating historical forms and figures, made up through fateful events and part of "historical ontologies". Because of their specific position inside opposed nationalisms, they can provide theoretical insights into the constituting of nationalizing narratives, ethnography and social sciences in East and Central Europe.
Anthropogeography, geopolitics, the dialogue and the polemics opposing sociology and geography ar... more Anthropogeography, geopolitics, the dialogue and the polemics opposing sociology and geography are central elements in the process of imagining the national space during the interwar period. A dense network of competitions, alliances and counter-alliances is coming together in this area of scientific legitimacy and representativity. The birth of this new disciplinary subdomain offers us the chance to track down the external influences, to see how the central scientific canon(s) are replicated and transformed at the periphery and how the Romanian culture finds itself synchronized with the dilemmas, themes and tensions of the European culture. This synchronicity occurs it is one of the theses of this paper under the sign of reactionary modernism. This perspective has the ability to question the uniqueness of the process of modernization. Is modernity a package deal or are there other ways of spelling modernity? This appropriation of the reactionary modernism discourse for the analysis...
In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing ... more In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Formerly industrial and infrastructural landscapes have been both materially and semantically reshaped through practices of restoration and attempts to revitalise ruins of failed modernisation projects. Around a socialist-era empty lake, landowners, real estate developers, casino capitalism, displaced people, hopes, fantasies, wild and stray animals converged, creating a differentially ordered landscape in an antagonistically articulated coexistence of wastelands and nature. V ac arești Nature Park developed a specific historical and social trajectory, as it became closely related with local middle-class projects and anxieties. In it, socialist ruins came into direct, sensuous contact with both nature and the fractured history of post-1990s Bucharest capitalism, enacting a twin infrastructural and ecological inversion.
Martor: The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review, 2006
The neo-Boasians (Bunzl, 2004; Orta, 2004; Bashkow, 2004 etc.) are proposing a non-alterity anthr... more The neo-Boasians (Bunzl, 2004; Orta, 2004; Bashkow, 2004 etc.) are proposing a non-alterity anthropology. This paper tries to show that they are overly optimistic and that, in embracing a counter-Enlightment tradition of thought, they are neglecting not only ambiguities but also nested alterities.
Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalisation of ... more Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalisation of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public administrators, and military elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenția and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project.
After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National pa... more After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National parks came into being as part of a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Scholarly efforts to understand national parks rely either on arguments about the social construction of nature or on political ecology. In this article, I attempt to point to the analytical potential of the literature on ruins for expanding studies carried out in both theoretical traditions. I draw from fieldwork in nature conservation areas in southeastern Romania to explore how actors gain access to critical discourses and complex ways of narrating and enrolling the landscapes. The mechanisms that counterpoise safeguarding and development are analyzed as parts of a longue durée articulation of ruination and modernization.
The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of... more The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of quarantinist outposts against the last waves of plague and the first waves of cholera. The crisis of this sanitary arrangement opened the way for a series of failed but productive projects of modernization. The collective political body was imagined and created through the nationalization of the medical profession and the attempts to create a sanitary social body. The failure to connect urban and rural bodies inside a democratic all-embracing network opened up spaces for discourses questioning the identity of the collective body. Was there a “Romanian element”? What did that mean and was it degenerating? Demographic anti-Semitism and the first attempts to think of socioeconomic and sanitary failures in terms of racial degeneracy emerged from the fissures of the national sanitary system. Bacteriology was able to partially absorb these critiques and propose a larger interventionist project in the space opened by the old-style sanitary police.
In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing ... more In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Formerly industrial and infrastructural landscapes have been both materially and semantically reshaped through practices of restoration and attempts to revitalise ruins of failed modernisation projects. Around a socialist-era empty lake, landowners, real estate developers, casino capitalism, displaced people, hopes, fantasies, wild and stray animals converged, creating a differentially ordered landscape in an antagonistically articulated coexistence of wastelands and nature. V ac arești Nature Park developed a specific historical and social trajectory, as it became closely related with local middle-class projects and anxieties. In it, socialist ruins came into direct, sensuous contact with both nature and the fractured history of post-1990s Bucharest capitalism, enacting a twin infrastructural and ecological inversion.
Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of ... more Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public administrators, and military elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenţia and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project.
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 2017
After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National pa... more After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National parks came into being as part of a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Scholarly efforts to understand national parks rely either on arguments about the social construction of nature or on political ecology. In this article, I attempt to point to the analytical potential of the literature on ruins for expanding studies carried out in both theoretical traditions. I draw from fieldwork in nature conservation areas in southeastern Romania to explore how actors gain access to critical discourses and complex ways of narrating and enrolling the landscapes. The mechanisms that counterpoise safeguarding and development are analyzed as parts of a longue durée articulation of ruination and modernization.
The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of... more The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of quarantinist outposts against the last waves of plague and the first waves of cholera. The crisis of this sanitary arrangement opened the way for a series of failed but productive projects of modernization. The collective political body was imagined and created through the nationalization of the medical profession and the attempts to create a sanitary social body. The failure to connect urban and rural bodies inside a democratic all-embracing network opened up spaces for discourses questioning the identity of the collective body. Was there a “Romanian element”? What did that mean and was it degenerating? Demographic anti-Semitism and the first attempts to think of socioeconomic and sanitary failures in terms of racial degeneracy emerged from the fissures of the national sanitary system. Bacteriology was able to partially absorb these critiques and propose a larger interventionist projec...
The issue of the various interconnections between the discourses on national self and leftist ide... more The issue of the various interconnections between the discourses on national self and leftist ideologies has long been an important part of the theoretical preoccupations regarding Central and Eastern Europe. The argument of Anton Allahar’s paper is developed in terms of class consciousness and false consciousness and explores their role in the creation of ethnic entrepreneurs and, implicitly, of ethno-nationalism. However, what is missing is the coupling of the analysis of the formation of subjectivities – ethnic and national – with the analysis of the context they are built in.
The connections between "the Humboldtian tradition" and very important cultural layers of the Eur... more The connections between "the Humboldtian tradition" and very important cultural layers of the European anti-Enlightenment movement can provide a powerful alternative to the mainstream(s) in today's social sciences. This tradition should be seen, though, in its concrete historicity and the political and theoretical blind spots which are part of this tradition ought to be carefully reconsidered. This anthropological tradition can be "unpacked" by bringing it closer to other theoretical trends which try to address modernity's inconsistencies and lack of unity (such as the one entailed by the thesis of the "different modernities")-in order to deconstruct its national closure and its administrative and state oriented background. One of the geographical, historical and social areas where alternative modernities (especially in their radical, "Christian Orthodox" guise), and Humboldtian traditions seem to intersect each other is the East European peasantry.
The Csangos are an ethnic/religious minority from Moldavia, Eastern Romania. They are defined as ... more The Csangos are an ethnic/religious minority from Moldavia, Eastern Romania. They are defined as legitimate subjects by two antagonistically nationalizing projects: the Hungarian and the Romanian one. I am not trying to discover some "authentic" or "hybrid" identity that would explain away the ambiguities connected with this ethno-religious group. The Csangos appear, in this paper, as mutating historical forms and figures, made up through fateful events and part of "historical ontologies". Because of their specific position inside opposed nationalisms, they can provide theoretical insights into the constituting of nationalizing narratives, ethnography and social sciences in East and Central Europe.
Anthropogeography, geopolitics, the dialogue and the polemics opposing sociology and geography ar... more Anthropogeography, geopolitics, the dialogue and the polemics opposing sociology and geography are central elements in the process of imagining the national space during the interwar period. A dense network of competitions, alliances and counter-alliances is coming together in this area of scientific legitimacy and representativity. The birth of this new disciplinary subdomain offers us the chance to track down the external influences, to see how the central scientific canon(s) are replicated and transformed at the periphery and how the Romanian culture finds itself synchronized with the dilemmas, themes and tensions of the European culture. This synchronicity occurs it is one of the theses of this paper under the sign of reactionary modernism. This perspective has the ability to question the uniqueness of the process of modernization. Is modernity a package deal or are there other ways of spelling modernity? This appropriation of the reactionary modernism discourse for the analysis...
In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing ... more In Central and Eastern Europe, nature protected areas came into being in a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Formerly industrial and infrastructural landscapes have been both materially and semantically reshaped through practices of restoration and attempts to revitalise ruins of failed modernisation projects. Around a socialist-era empty lake, landowners, real estate developers, casino capitalism, displaced people, hopes, fantasies, wild and stray animals converged, creating a differentially ordered landscape in an antagonistically articulated coexistence of wastelands and nature. V ac arești Nature Park developed a specific historical and social trajectory, as it became closely related with local middle-class projects and anxieties. In it, socialist ruins came into direct, sensuous contact with both nature and the fractured history of post-1990s Bucharest capitalism, enacting a twin infrastructural and ecological inversion.
Martor: The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review, 2006
The neo-Boasians (Bunzl, 2004; Orta, 2004; Bashkow, 2004 etc.) are proposing a non-alterity anthr... more The neo-Boasians (Bunzl, 2004; Orta, 2004; Bashkow, 2004 etc.) are proposing a non-alterity anthropology. This paper tries to show that they are overly optimistic and that, in embracing a counter-Enlightment tradition of thought, they are neglecting not only ambiguities but also nested alterities.
Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalisation of ... more Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalisation of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public administrators, and military elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenția and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project.
After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National pa... more After 1990, nature conservation areas multiplied all over Central and Eastern Europe. National parks came into being as part of a dramatically changing society, economy, and culture. Scholarly efforts to understand national parks rely either on arguments about the social construction of nature or on political ecology. In this article, I attempt to point to the analytical potential of the literature on ruins for expanding studies carried out in both theoretical traditions. I draw from fieldwork in nature conservation areas in southeastern Romania to explore how actors gain access to critical discourses and complex ways of narrating and enrolling the landscapes. The mechanisms that counterpoise safeguarding and development are analyzed as parts of a longue durée articulation of ruination and modernization.
The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of... more The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of quarantinist outposts against the last waves of plague and the first waves of cholera. The crisis of this sanitary arrangement opened the way for a series of failed but productive projects of modernization. The collective political body was imagined and created through the nationalization of the medical profession and the attempts to create a sanitary social body. The failure to connect urban and rural bodies inside a democratic all-embracing network opened up spaces for discourses questioning the identity of the collective body. Was there a “Romanian element”? What did that mean and was it degenerating? Demographic anti-Semitism and the first attempts to think of socioeconomic and sanitary failures in terms of racial degeneracy emerged from the fissures of the national sanitary system. Bacteriology was able to partially absorb these critiques and propose a larger interventionist project in the space opened by the old-style sanitary police.
In Inventing the Social in Romania, 1848–1914, Călin Cotoi brings to life several ‘obscure’ anarc... more In Inventing the Social in Romania, 1848–1914, Călin Cotoi brings to life several ‘obscure’ anarchists, physicians, public hygienists and reformers roaming the borderlands of Europe and Russia. The book follows individuals, texts, projects, sometimes even bacteria, traveling, meeting, colliding, writing and talking to each other in surprising places, and on changing topics. All of them navigated the land, sometimes finding unexpected loopholes and shortcuts in it, and emerged in different and unexpected parts of the social, political or geographical space. Using materials ranging from anarchists’ letters, to social-theoretical debates and medical treatises, Călin Cotoi points to the larger theoretical and historical issues involved in the local creation of the social, its historicity, and its representability.
The debate between Romanian Narodniks (Poporanists) and orthodox Marxists proved to be inconclude... more The debate between Romanian Narodniks (Poporanists) and orthodox Marxists proved to be inconcludent. None of the sides actually won the debate in a decisive theoretical or political-institutional way. Nevertheless, its importance resided in the imagining of a Romanian national idea from inside fin-de-siècle socialism. The powerful mixture of strong moral feelings with faith in science and social progress, that was one of the main strengths of the XIX-th century socialism, came to be, indirectly, one of the forces that legitimized the national construction of Romania. The local, Romanian, dissolution of Russian born Narodnicism created a nexus between „social” and „national” no other ideological or social current could.
Acest text este o variantă extinsă a „Cholera, Health for All, Nation-
Building, and Racial Degen... more Acest text este o variantă extinsă a „Cholera, Health for All, Nation- Building, and Racial Degeneration in Nineteenth-Century Romania”, în East Central Europe 43, 2016, pp. 161-187.
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Papers by Calin Cotoi
Building, and Racial Degeneration in Nineteenth-Century Romania”, în East
Central Europe 43, 2016, pp. 161-187.