How can I make sense of the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine? Each day we awake and write to family and friends (in Kamianske, Kharkiv, Kyiv…) to make sure they’re still alive. It’s a grim ritual. I don’t want to ask them to write back if they don’t have the capacity, either emotional or material. But I can see when my messages are read, and that means something. A friend in Kharkiv has no electricity and no water, but he wrote…
My hope, as I’ve written before, is that this time away from the normal processes of sustaining and reproducing our lives would give us the opportunity – both individually and societally – to rethink how things are. Obviously this is culturally dependent and different places have different values, but I’m referring to my experiences in the industrial north, ranging from Russia to the United States, with a smattering of more progressive western European nations to boot. So what am I…
It’s probably not very academic to mention Paulo Coelho, I suppose, because of his new age connotations and the seductive sense of superiority that we get from relying on citations and peer review and institutional frameworks. But I don’t care, because it’s Week Forever of the Covid19 lockdown, I don’t talk with anyone outside of my immediate clan and the occasional chat with an armored grocery store worker, and everything everywhere is different. My zoom colleagues (now there’s a phrase…
I’m sick of looking at logarithmic scales and comparing infection rates among different nations. I can’t peel myself away from the data, though, looking at site after site after site. I text with friends and family around the world, comparing the news media to lived experience. I feel lucky. I feel guilty. I feel scared. I’m continuing my work as best I can. My university suspended activities. My kids are home from school too and everything would be fine except…
Dissertation Blues Writing this thing is like building a house. Only I can’t actually see what I’m doing, the plans keep changing, and there are periodic earthquakes. It’s a wonder that I’m this far along at all! A brief progress report: I broke ground on this, officially, on February 28 2018, so almost a year ago. I know this because I’ve been keeping a strict work diary so I don’t lose track of myself or the overall sweep of things….
“At some point you have to take a moral stance and say that undermining authoritarian governments is better than undermining democratic ones.” This is how Robert Orttung, from the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington, answered my question today. Robert, together with Sufian Zhemukhov, have written enough about the Sochi Olympics that you pretty much have to cite them if you do any work at all in this area (see, for example, this article in East European Politics,…
In June, I was detained in Volgograd and questioned by the Russian migration authorities and the FSB. I was lucky, all things considered, even though the experience was extraordinarily unpleasant. I know that many others have had it much worse, particularly those Russians who might have differing or minority opinions and may try to effect change based on expressing those views. I was hopeful that the issue was merely one of local authorities flexing their muscles, and that with time…