PhD Thesis: In Estonia, the Past Is not What Used to Be
Today, on 24 May, Francisco Martínez defended his doctoral dissertation, which explores the distinction between what is given historically and what the new generation actually makes of what is inherited. Through a series of case studies, the work draws attention to how the Estonian society has been reconfigured through the interpretation of its recent past.
Today, on 24 May, Francisco Martínez defended his doctoral dissertation, which explores the distinction between what is given historically and what the new generation actually makes of what is inherited. Through a series of case studies, the work draws attention to how the Estonian society has been reconfigured through the interpretation of its recent past.
Ethnographically, Martínez argues that the degradation of the Soviet past arose as ad hoc to the abrupt social transformation and the need to build up the new state. The conclusion, however, points out that a generational change is already turning the post-socialist anti-paradigm obsolete, as young people do not search for justification in the past and show a more plural construction of their identity.
As his work demonstrates, generational and ethnic differences in Estonia rely, to a great extent, on past narratives and are manifested in spatial configurations, strategies of value creation, public discourses, and structures of inequality and power. Paradoxically, a new generation that does not remember the Soviet time and is particularly open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power in the course of generational change.
The so-called ‘Children of Freedom’ grew up in a world which became more globalised, among multiple scales of social action and cultural configuration, and having to cope with extensive levels of consumer culture, precarity and changing media technologies. Hence, a new society is being built in the shell of the old, yet demographically; not based in integrative policies that help to overcome the post-socialist anti-paradigm, yet being accomplished by generational replace.
Devoted to comparative empirical investigation and theoretical development, this proactive anthropology shows that the contemporary is composed of both old and new elements, and their interactions. Post-socialist changes brought not simply a lack of diversity towards the past, but also lack of equality. Accordingly, this work accounts for ways of looking back that are ‘other’, drawing attention to how the past is approached in contemporary Estonia differently.
Francisco Martinez’s dissertation “Wasted Legacies? Material Culture in Contemporary Estonia” was supervised by Prof. Patrick Laviolette (Tallinn University) and Dr. Siobhan Kattago (University of Tartu). The reviewers are Prof. Victor Buchli (University College London) and Dr. Maria Mälksoo (University of Tartu).
The public defence (viva) will take place on Tuesday (24 May) at 12 at Tallinn University lecture hall M-213, Uus-Sadama 5. The dissertation can be found at ETERA, the electronic research library of TLU.