Identity and Nation Building in Everyday Post-Socialist Life

This book explores the function of the “everyday” in the formation, consolidation and performance of national, sub-national and local identities in the former socialist region. Based on extensive original research including fieldwork, the book demonstrates how the study of everyday and mundane practices is a meaningful and useful way of understanding the socio-political processes of identity formation both at the top and bottom level of a state. The book covers a wide range of countries including the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and considers “everyday” banal practices, including those related to consumption, kinship, embodiment, mobility, music, and the use of objects and artifacts. Overall, the book draws on, and contributes to, theory; and shows how the process of nation-building is not just undertaken by formal actors, such as the state, its institutions and political elites.

Abel Polese is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Governance and Political Science of Tallinn University, Estonia,?and the School of Law and Government of Dublin City University, Ireland.

Jeremy Morris is Co-Director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies and a Senior Lecturer in Russian Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Oleksandra Seliverstova is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Political Science and Governance at Tallinn University, Estonia.

Emilia Pawlusz is an early stage researcher in the School of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn University, Estonia.