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9781526126252

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'After some decades of optimistic efforts at being a part of a larger European community promising freedom and prosperity, Latvians faced severe austerity measures after the financial crisis of 2008. They were asked to swallow a toad as the local lore had it. In this sensitive and perceptive ethnography, Liene Ozolina uses the mundane, and often absurd, practices of training and motivation programs for the unemployed to explore how ordinary Latvians interpret their own selves, history and future. Set against the standard critiques of the effects of neoliberal austerity, Ozolina demonstrates how decades of Soviet life profoundly shape Latvian ideas of their capacity for waiting as much as their spirited and dogged embrace of the ideals of responsibility and individual freedom. Written with clarity, empathy and great insight, this work demonstrates the power of good ethnography in understanding the rich vernacular life of global ideas of freedom, the good life and dignity.' Thomas Blom Hansen, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, author of Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa -- .

"'After some decades of optimistic efforts at being a part of a larger European community promising freedom and prosperity, Latvians faced severe austerity measures after the financial crisis of 2008. They were asked to ""swallow a toad"" as the local lore had it. In this sensitive and perceptive ethnography, Liene Ozolina uses the mundane, and often absurd, practices of training and motivation programs for the unemployed to explore how ordinary Latvians interpret their own selves, history and future. Set against the standard critiques of the effects of neoliberal austerity, Ozolina demonstrates how decades of Soviet life profoundly shape Latvian ideas of their capacity for ""waiting"" as much as their spirited and dogged embrace of the ideals of responsibility and individual freedom. Written with clarity, empathy and great insight, this work demonstrates the power of good ethnography in understanding the rich vernacular life of global ideas of freedom, the ""good life"" and dignity.' Thomas Blom Hansen, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, author of Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa 'An important contribution to contemporary discussions about the temporality of what is made politically invisible, forms of social control, and the state’s role in organising our experience of time. ...The volume serves to push forward something akin to ""waiting studies"", opening new research agendas for further study and making clear the significance of this practice.' Francisco Martínez, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures -- ."

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Liene Ozolina is Course Tutor in Political Sociology at the London School of Economics

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