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Graduate Programs in International Affairs presents Visiting Scholar Tatjana Thelen's brown bag seminar: After Critique: Becoming the Authoritarian State
In this talk, I offer a perspective on how starting with a critical stance towards the state can paradoxically lead to becoming the (authoritarian) state. Based on my long-term ethnographic engagement in post-socialist regions of Europe, I follow the rise of a Roman Catholic NGO. This organization arrived in the region with a critique of gaps in state care and as a charity it continues to receive international support for its activities. However, its critical stance has faded as its activities and norms have increasingly merged with the state’s in Hungary.
This development could be seen as resulting from an unforeseen and maybe unintentional overlapping of norms and ideals related to work, but it still paved the way for the NGO’s integration into the state. This development is significant in two ways. First, since liberal civil-rights-based approaches largely failed to improve the situation of the poorest segments of society, new patron-client relations sometimes seemed the only, or even the preferable, option. Second, this situation, might leave both local residents and researchers feeling practically and theoretically stuck. Thus, to avoid an overly simplistic or reductionist interpretation, I analyze the changing role of critique of the state in this process. I aim to offer hope by demonstrating how these situations are always fluid and open.
Discussions to include Patrick Ciaschi
Patrick Ciaschi received his PhD, Politics at the New School for Social Research and is a former Teaching Fellow in Global Studies.
Presented by the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs at the Schools of Public Engagement.
Tatjana Thelen is a professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Previously she served as the Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford, and was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Paris. She carried out fieldwork in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and eastern Germany. Among her research interest are care, state, property, and kinship. Currently she is writing a book on the role of political atmospheres in state transformation.
The Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs at The New School in New York City are designed to prepare engaged, reflective global citizens who can contribute to making the world more inclusive, just, and sustainable. The most pressing contemporary challenges — from the rise of authoritarian regimes and refugee crises to youth unemployment and climate change — demand the deep understanding of complex global systems, new perspectives, real-world experience, and commitment to social justice that our programs provide.
Named among the top international affairs programs by the Foreign Policy Association, our Graduate Programs in International Affairs are distinctive in The New School tradition: critical, engaged, and truly global.
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