States of (be)longing : the politics of nostalgia in transition societies.
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Date
2012
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Abstract
South Africa and Russia achieved two of the most remarkable political transformations in
modern history, yet significant numbers of their citizens feel a longing for aspects of the old
regimes. While there have been some studies of nostalgia among older Russians and South
Africans, the following is the first comparative qualitative examination of the phenomenon
among young members of the countries’ inaugural “born free” generations: those who came
into the world just before or after the fall of Apartheid and Communism, and have had little
or no experience of life prior to regime change. Its purpose is to examine how and why young
people growing up in post-authoritarian transition societies experience, and long for, the past.
I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven South African and five Russian
youths, recruited through purposive sampling, who reflected on the ways in which the recent
past impacts their lives, self-perceptions and socio-political identities. While they differed in
some areas, respondents from both countries identified several broadly shared areas of
nostalgia, clustering around a perceived loss of community, moral values, personal safety and
social trust; and a concomitant rise in individualism, materialism and anomie. Employing a
Marxian engagement with symbolic interactionism and interpretative phenomenological
analysis, I analyse their transcribed testimonies in light of the relevant scholarship on
nostalgia, social memory and transition studies, alongside theories of post-modernity and
critical sociology. I conclude that their nostalgia may be the product of Russia and South
Africa’s belated and compressed transition from “modern” to “post-modern” societies; a
rebellion against the harsh transition to a Baumanian “liquid” life characterised by economic
precariousness and the fraying of social bonds; and/or an expression of profound ambivalence
that struggles to reconcile nostalgic regrets about the risks and human costs of globalised
capitalist polyarchy, with a hunger to exploit the freedom and opportunities it offers.
Description
Theses (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.
Keywords
Political culture--South Africa., Political culture--Russia., Post-apartheid era--South Africa., Post communism--Russia., Nostalgia--South Africa., Nostalgia--Russia., Collective memory--South Africa., Collective memory--Russia., Theses--Sociology.