Fairytale Cynicism in the Kingdom of Plastic Bags: Mapping Power and Powerlessness in Chelnochovsk-na-Dniestre, Ukraine

Diana R. Blank

Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, UC Berkeley

Abstract: This paper is an anthropological exploration of the concept of place, focusing on a city in Ukraine, which the author identifies as Chelnochovsk-na-Dniestre. Globalization and international boundaries magnify the sense of importance of “place” in Chelnochovsk, where there is a strong of their locality, but a locality that is defined in opposition to “elsewhere.” Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, power in Chenochovsk has become so localized that it is expressed in terms of the local landscape. This power is articulated in rhetoric that can only be defined as fairytale. In turn, people call upon an ironic cynicism to account for and to accommodate a deep sense of powerlessness in contemporary life, and this, too, is expresses in terms of landscape. This paper seeks to move toward understanding a sense of place as a native category that goes beyond the cognitive, both palpably felt and physically located.

Keywords: Chelnochovsk-na-Dniestre; Ukraine; post-Soviet; place; location; power; landscape; fairytale; cynicism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06-01
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