Book Discussion: Caring Like a State: The Politics of Russia's Demographic Crisis, by Inna Leykin

Session Submission Type: Book Discussion Roundtable

Brief Description

The post-Soviet Russian state is haunted by the specter of a shrinking population. Despite well-publicized pronatalist campaigns, declining birth rates and rising mortality rates cast doubt on the state's ability to properly care for its people. Caring Like a State: The Politics of Russia’s Demographic Crisis explores the national preoccupation with demography in Russia as a lens through which to understand the post-Soviet state’s aspirations and failures to care for its population. It follows the circulation of demographic knowledge in contemporary Russia to show how its production and public consumption have shaped social imaginaries about normative families, national sovereignty, and the self. Anthropologist Inna Leykin demonstrates that the language of demography has been influential in defining what kind of behavior and social aspirations are considered worthy of state support and protection. Specifically, this study examines a range of actors, from social scientists who translate ethical concerns about appropriate demographic behavior into seemingly objective “facts,” to non-state actors who circulate ideas about deserving targets of state care, to Russian citizens who respond and reconfigure official expectations informed by demographic data. By using an anthropological approach to study the relations between expertise, post-Soviet political culture, and social institutions such as the family, this book offers a new vision of the Russian state’s governing methods and their effects on familial relations of care and aspirations of people in post-Soviet Russia.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Michele Rivkin-Fish, UNC at Chapel Hill

Roundtable Speakers

• Xenia A. Cherkaev, Max Planck Inst for Social Anthropology (Germany)

• Inna Leykin, Open U (Israel)

• Liene Ozolina, Latvian Academy of Culture (Latvia)

• Tatjana Thelen, U of Vienna (Austria)