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Aarelaid-Tart
Andrle
Hoikkala
Kyllönen
Lyon
May
Rotkirch
Schou Wetlesen
Struck
Temkina
Testenoire
Zdravomyslova
Ph.D Aili Aarelaid-Tart
Institute of International and Social Studies
Tallinn, Estonia
e-mail:aarelaid@iiss.ee
I.
I was born in the third spring of peace-time and grew up under
late Stalinism and the Krushchovian "thaw" that followed. But only now,
more than a half of a century later, can I put a question what happened
to my personal mind, to the minds of my parents and relatives, to the minds
of several millions of Baltic peoples during two earlier decades of Soviet
occupation. I would like to tell you the story of the formation and later
transformations of double standards inside the minds of Sovietised people.
I am not a young politician, so I will not decide who was wrong
and who was right. I am a middle-aged researcher who first of all wishes
to describe what has happened to my own and neighbouring nations.
At first, let me give some kind of explanation to the phenomenon
of double- mindedness. The well-known fact is that totalitarian systems
create a deep discrepancy between public and private spheres. Nationalist
feelings belonged to the neighbourhood- and home-centred private sphere,
opposed to the public sphere which was dominated by the doctrine of the
flourishing Communist Future. That split between public and private spheres
provided the circumstances for the emergence of ambivalent thinking and
behaviour of a huge number of people living by the ideals and norms
of two absolutely different cultural configurations at the same time. The
formation of ambivalent double- mindedness gave them opportunities to cherish
the values of the oppressed private sphere and act in accordance with the
firmly restricted public sphere, thus diminishing the mental influence
of the oppression of alien power.
Double-mindedness is a deep and extraordinary sensitive socio-psychological
mechanism for the adaptation of people living under the unfavourable conditions
caused by major historical upheavals. The main function of this mechanism
is the self-protection of individual identities in the permanent coercive
process of switching over from one ideological system to the other. The
emergence of double standards avoids a situation when the larger part of
a certain society feels as losers in a complicated historic drama. Every
human being would like to stay alive even under the conditions of violent
dislocation, unjustified imprisonment or terrorist political regime. To
balance the earlier internal value-world with new external ideological
demands, a lot of Baltic men and women created a system of ambivalent mental
norms to cope with their everyday life in post-war conditions.
The phenomenon of double-mindedness is not a unique production
of late Stalinism in the Baltic countries. Researchers of mental history
can follow for the same double standards during every extraordinary and
rapid socio-political turn. Even at the beginning of the 1990s, after the
rapid collapse of Soviet power, thousands of inhabitants of the Baltic
states have had to adapt to the standards of working and thinking legalised
in the Western world, although they were educated inside the "red" ideology.
To avoid idle running and instability the more active and adjustable part
of the population "shuttled" several years between two contrary normative
systems, finding a new balance to continue inside unknown earlier Post-modern
world. Thus, the formation of double mental standards as socio-psyhcological
adapter is not a historical rarity. We can interpret the case of late Stalinism
in the Baltic countries as an extra painful version of such a process.
To analyse the abovementioned phenomenon, I use two original
data-bases. One of them was formed by myself in 1996-1998 and consists
of 73 in-depth interviews with outstanding intellectuals and political
key persons from the occupational period. The results of my fieldwork are
published in Estonian under the title "Soviets or Europeans" at the end
of last year. In parallel, there is a wonderful book from the same year
by an exile Latvian lady (whom I have never met) Vieda Skultans titled
"Testimony of lives", published in English by Routledge. The authors of
these books have different angles to interpret what has happened
to neighbouring nations in the process of Sovietising their mentalities.
Most of my respondents were "winners", or persons with good inner
adapters. They not only survived the alien mental conditions, but even
had remarkable positions on the cultural landscape of Soviet Estonia. The
Latvian colleague's respondents are conceived first of all as "losers"
whereas most of them were diagnosed with neurasthenia based on earlier
sufferings under Stalinist repressions. Notwithstanding whether our respondents
were compromisers or non-conformists, "winners" or losers" of a large historical
lottery, all of them have gone through the machinery of mental camouflage.
The restitution of independent Baltic states has given rise to a self-purification
of our respondents. It must be underlined that both databases are records
of the experiences of individual Estonian or Latvian men and women under
Soviet rule. But a researcher must be very careful while interpreting these
records because there is a large difference between lives lived and lives
remembered: In the 1990s the respondents did not tell us their real biographies,
but a renewed version of the myth about "real lives" lived more than forty
years ago. After the restoration of the independent republics our respondents
presented themselves either as heroes in a long-run struggle against Soviet
reality or as victims of inhuman historical circumstances. This very clear
polarisation of life-myths is itself a reincarnation of the ambivalent
phenomenon of double thinking.
The average duration of these in-depth interviews was three hours
and the respondents told me the stories of their lives from the first childhood
memories till the 1980s. I had a hidden questionnaire in my head to direct
our discussion, asking them how they became aware of the fact of existence
of the pre-war republic, how they were explained the invasion of Russian/German
military forces, how they remembered deportations, Stalin's death and the
beginning of the "thaw", the Hungarian uprising in 1956 as a crucial point
in anti-Soviet struggle. There was a special question about their belonging
to the Communist Party or to the Young Communist League and the respondents
explained in free form why they joined these "red" organisations. I have
more
than 200 hours of recorded materials to put the main problem: how do the
respondents explain now, forty years later, the emergence of double thinking
during the first two decades of Soviet power. I am interested in how did
the clash of two fundamentally different cultural configurations
determine lots of events and sometimes the whole course of lives
of my respondents. I am asking by which way did they recognise this mental
clash and, following it, double-mindedness and by which way did they try
to overcome inner alienation.
My analysis will move through different generational units to
show how these two configurations with opposite value-systems were embodied
in several age cohorts and how they were reshaped according to the permanently
renewing political context. The analysis of the interviews identifies three
broad political generations. Firstly, there is the republican generation,
born between 1914 and 1930, who had experienced Estonian independence in
their youth and to whom the re-shaping of minds under the foreign occupations
was an extraordinarily hard trial. Next, there is the Stalinist generation,
who were young adults during the darkest years of repression, 1946-1956,
and to whom the following of the rules of double standards was a question
of life and death. Thirdly, I have identified the generation of the
thaw, or the youth of the 1960s, who matured in a liberalised political
and cultural environment initiated by Khrushchev and who innocently mastered
the frames of double thinking.
Karl Mannheim identifies two assumptions of generation analysis:
(1) generation units are formed by significant historical events; and (2)
culture is defined in part by interaction among generations (Mannheim,
74). In my paper I would like to show the generation continuity of the
mechanism of double- mindedness which was understood by the republican
generation as a forced mental pattern and a grievous mistake of history,
by the Stalinist generation as a self-defensive and purposeful white lie,
and, finally, by the generation of the "thaw" as a natural mixture and
normal coexistence of controversial world-views. I am looking for the reasons
why "the themes which structure the memories of the republican generation,
namely stoicism, work, reparation and loss, continue to structure the memories
of the next generation" (Skultans, p.5), but not the memories of the generation
after the next who, in fact, were the kids of the first generation.
Next, let me shortly describe these two oppositional, but complementary
mental configurations deterring the minds of Baltic peoples in post-war
conditions. The first one was Estonianness (Latvianness, Lithuanianness)
which is characterised by a value-cluster as a will to continue the life
interrupted in 1940 as it was before; an introverted life-style within
one's own farmstead, correctness in work; a priority of the Estonian (Latvian,
Lithuanian) language on every stage of social interaction; pure nature
as a warranty of social stability, etc. The key-words to mark this configuration
were pastorality, individualism and localism as well as national feelings
associated with the mother tongue. I will call the second configuration
Sovietness with a value-cluster consisting of orientations like communist
internationalism which aimed at interrupting ties with the past full
of enigmas of the nation; deep class distinction and forced collectivisation
that followed, industrialisation and urbanisation as the mainstream of
building up Communism; a strong priority of the Russian language as a tool
of imperialism. Whereas in Orthodoxy and in the collectivist tradition
of Russian culture there is no place for the "primacy of the law of Man"
(Russian mentality, 50) the re-stratification of the new Socialist society
was put into practise through large-scale and violent political campaigns.
The key-words for this configuration were huge heroic collectivism, unprecedented
"happy future" and empire-building plus giving a priority to Russians as
"elder and more experienced brothers".
Thus, reversed configurations of mental realities were directed
to transform the ordinary Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian people to homo
soveticus - a man/woman with a double, both external and internal morality
and psyche. (Russian Mentality, p. 103). They tried to act according to
both the internal norms of their "own" private sphere full of trustworthy
friends and relatives and the strict external distrustful norms of "alien"
public sphere. But Communist ideology succeeded in creating a double-faced
Soviet Baltic man/woman only to a certain extent. Many people, however,
did not succumb to complete deformation, for they worked out within themselves
a saving submissiveness and the ability to remain inconspicuous to the
environment, sometimes even to one's self (V. Bukovsky). According to the
official doctrine this Soviet man was determined by life in a collective,
through the collective and for the collective as a drive wheel of a machine,
in which the individual fulfilled the role of a screw. Unofficially, an
individualistic homo ludens playing any kind of equivocal games with the
Soviet authorities was approved and largely accepted. All the Soviet oppressions
to minimise Estonianness (Latvianess, Lithuanianness) as a mental configuration
were really oriented "to provide people with a primordial bases for identity,
a sentiment often highly prized in an alienated world" (Buell, 28).
These configurations of Estonianness and Sovietness related
to each other as the well-known semiotic opposition of "our world" and
"their world." "Foreign world" means the unknown, unstable, without norms,
and that is why it is generally questionable as a "world", rather qualifying
as a "non-world". "Our world" is a discrete world, distinguishable, individualised,
familiar. In the semiotic sense this is the world of "proper names", the
world of ‘singular forms meaning oneness, singularity while the "foreign
world" is a world of an abstract plural form and common names (Russian
Mentality, 91). The historical tragedy for the Baltic peoples consists
in the absurd that from the beginning of the 1940s "our world" and "foreign
world" were re-labelled by force and changed their natural places. According
to the new ideological doctrine the "non-world" had to become the "proper
world", and, to the contrary "our" turned into "foreign". For millions
of Baltic people that rapid re-labelling was unreasonable and some kind
of adaptive mechanism might set going. As a fundamental socio-psyhcological
protector the double mental standards were launched and unofficially legitimised.
Thus, reversed configurations of mental realities were aimed
at making ordinary Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian people the homo soveticus
as a man/woman with a double, both external and internal morality and psyche.
(Russian Mentality, p. 103). They tried to act according to both the internal
norms of their "own" private sphere full of trustworthy friends and relatives
and the strict external distrustful norms of "alien" public sphere. But
Communist ideology succeeded in creating a double-faced Soviet Baltic man/woman
only to a certain extent. Many people, however, did not succumb to complete
deformation, for they worked out within themselves a saving submissiveness
and the ability to remain inconspicuous to the environment, sometimes even
to one's self (V. Bukovsky). According to an official doctrine this Soviet
man was determined by life in a collective, through the collective and
for the collective as a drive wheel of a machine, in which the individual
fulfilled the role of a screw. Unofficially, an individualistic homo ludens
playing any kind of equivocal game with the Soviet authorities was approved
and largely accepted. All the Soviet oppressions to minimise Estonianness
(Latvianess, Lithuanianness) as mental configurations were really oriented
"to provide people with a primordial bases for identity, a sentiment often
highly prized in an alienated world" (Buell, 28).
II
Next, I would like to open the window to the past and listen
what different generations actually told about their mental collisions
during the first two decades of Soviet occupation. At the same time a researcher
must be careful whereas nobody among the informants had any monopoly of
historical truth and every remembered case "how it really was" is a strong
narcotic for the respondent him/herself.
The self-consciousness of the republican generation developed
during the period of independent statehood. They faced the Soviet configuration
at a completely unsuitable moment of their careers - as high-school pupils
or students full of dreams about the future. They had grown up in the ascent
of nationalism, they had a rather vague idea of Russia, those who were
more enterprising had connected their further plans of study with Europe.
The memories of a Latvian, Talis, of his childhood with national culture
and history are curiously lyrical:
"Everyone`s childhood is dear to them. I dreamt of everything,
much about history. About my young days, and what my mother and father
taught me, about my ancestors, about the formation of the Latvian state.
My parents were great patriots although my mother was born into a servan
family."
A Latvian youngster, Janis, has characterised the mentality of
his generation to Vieda Skultans as follows: "You see the generation in
which I grew up, we were such strange people. We were the ancestors of
these hippies. We dreamt of sailing around the world in sailing boats or
warking. Our ideal was an educated wanderer, who could wander around. It's
quite difficult to imagine - you can't even understand it. The world seemed
so terribly beautiful that it had to be seen and felt......... Those were
my dreams about a perfect freedom, to travel about... We were all educated.
all poets in the context of that time we were an educated generation, but
so very childish and with unrealistic ideas" (Skultans, 71-72).
Of course, all these ideas and fantasies were broken in the following
historical tragedy.
Tõnis, then a high-school pupil (b. 1927), perceived the
year 1940 as a time of confusion: " In June 1940 people did not understand
what was going on, not even those whom one could expect to do so. For example,
every year a reunion of the chevaliers of the Estonian Cross of Freedom
took place. They had a right to take their sons with them. I was able to
attend two such reunions, the last was in Pärnu, on June 16, 1940.
Those men at the reunion had no idea whatsoever what was going on at the
moment. It seems to me that these events were out of general attention.
There was a general understanding among the people that Estonia would have
to tend to some direction anyway, either to the east or to the west. One
rather discussed whether it would be better to go on with Germans or Russians.
Those wealthier tended towards the Germans and the poorer towards the Russians.
One can by no means argue that the Estonian people had consciously been
prejudiced against Russians. Of course, there were some groups. Left-wing
intellectuals and the press had done their job well. Lots of people were
opposed to the rule of president Päts. There was no clear vision of
what was coming."
For school-leaver Eva (b.1921) the June events could be clearly
described as a gross collision of "own" and "alien".
"It seems to me that all those events simply came as a shock
to people. Every sudden turn was frightening, it kept in control. Afterwards
one became accustomed and adapted, but all this took years. In 1940 I realised
that there is something deeply alien, although my father also went to the
mission. But when the soldiers of the Red Army came in single file and
stink, when the planes came with a terrible roar - that was a shock of
facing an alien world. Even ideology was less important. On June 21 I stood
in front of the Kadriorg Palace when this pitiful army, many Russian soldiers
arrived, guarded by tanks. It was clear at that moment what was going to
happen. Päts came on the balcony and made cheep that dear fellow citizens
etc. Down there stood men with red flags who growled in answer. Then I
also cried, for the republic, of course, and for the pitiful Päts.
In our circles one did not like Päts, but he was still our own. Instead
came something terrible and alien."
The rolling over values given at home and at school of a mentality
that came along the new annexation, those young people perceived with despair
and as a conscious need to adapt to a mentality that was substantially
alien for them. "The contrast as again between what might have been and
what was, between unlimited potential and constraint" (Skultans, 73). However,
it was namely this generation that was most active to try out the new circumstances
as, despite everything, they were in an age when one had to think about
self-realisation and career, notwithstanding the dramatically changed situation.
On the basis of the experiments and their experience of hide-and-seek a
cognitive structure was built that became an inevitability of everyday
life for the next two generations. Quoting V. Skultans: " What is experienced
as history by one generation becomes structure for the next." (Skultans,
103).
During the invasion of Russian troops and the breakout of the
war the members of the later Stalinist generation were still just children.
Sensitive childhood was too tender for such a rapid social turn and most
Estonian as well as Latvian informants remember those times as a nightmare.
The collision of two worlds gave rise to, first of all, existential fear
in them that they have carried in them for decades. Double-thinking became
a white lie grown into them, something they could not escape. Most of this
generation played this double game quite consciously, but, in contrast
to their predecessors, they did it more eagerly, but also more ambitiously,
drawn by a fear of living.
Two next quotations describe the existential contacts of people
now almost sixty years old with the "alien". The then four-year-old little
Estonian boy Haljand remembers the June events as follows: "The coming
of Soviet power is my first memory of myself. My parents were farmers near
Ravila. Grandparents from Viru-Nigula were visiting us and on this very
Sunday one set about going to the church. By Sunday evening they had not
returned and we were terribly frightened. For three days from June 16 they
were not able to cross the Tallinn-Narva highway as it was blocked up with
Russian troops. From then on the fear of a foreign power was deeply rooted
inside me, it was so-to-say imprinted into me. A terrible fear of an alien
world. This fear was expressed and it was repeated many times. Upheavals
have been especially dreadful: in September 1944 there was acute fear,
in March 1949 I was frightened to death."
Ly who made through the war and repressions as a little girl
recalled the mental atmosphere of those times as follows: "Don't you touch
the curtains, it is getting dark soon!" sounded one of the strictest prohibitions
of my childhood. Home was a defenceless place. We were all very vulnerable
at home, very loose. During and immediately after the war children, mothers
and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers were lower than the circumstances.
The big elm-tree behind the house was above all our heads, it was free.
But otherwise there were guns and tanks all around, and very small people,
oppressed by circumstances, beside the big elms."
Thus, the children of the 1940s already realised that they had
to learn different and often contradictory roles, in other words, they
learned social acting. They began to understand that home and school were
two entirely different places and how one behaved at school and how one
thought at home were not comparable worlds of value. One realised that
one had to make a clear distinction between these things, that it was dangerous
to make a mistake. At school one had to pretend loyalty to the new authorities.
There might of course be such teachers at school as well who were themselves
still loyal to the old regime and to them one had to talk in the language
of the old regime. But one had to talk in quite another language with the
"red" teachers. This was a question of survival as when a child mixed up
the borders of these languages at school, it could mean that his/her parents
were sent to Siberia.
Marju who was born in 1940 in Estonia remembers the double-facedness
of those times as follows: "In 1953-1957 I went to Tallinn Secondary School
No.7 where there were still many teachers of old times, this came out especially
in everyday communication. The director of studies was a Russian Estonian
who also was dressed respectively. In general, the teachers were clearly
divided into two and it was up to the children whether to identify themselves
with one side or the other. Children did this eagerly and there were even
those who identified themselves completely with the new world-view. For
boys the military style of the Red Army might be an inducement, there were
even some girls who admired Russian Estonianness as a style. When I went
to elementary school journals and books of the times of the Republic
of Estonia had still been preserved, then one favoured the Estonian-time
written word and former customs at school, following a silent agreement
between pupils and teachers, mentally one still lived in the Estonian time.
By high school the circumstances had changed, then there were those and
others at school."
Latvian schoolgirl Lienite whose parents were sentenced under
the 58th clause for betrayal of the Fatherland, i.e. the Soviet Union remembered:
"Children are never fools. Perhaps their experience of life is narrower.
At that time all of us who were the children of deported parents, we all
knew perfectly well which is our fatherland and who we were. We all knew
how to keep quiet... A child is just as wise, not more foolish by one kopeck.
We knew with whom we could talk and with whom not, or whether to talk at
all." (Skultans, 93).
The fact of dangling between two worlds is also revealed in the
memories of another Latvian schoolgirl Antra: "How shall I put it? Up to
that time I hadn't noticed a bad attitude towards me from others because
anyone behaved well. But when I started school, then gradually one or the
other teacher would throw a phrase at me. And gradually I became very sensitive
to this issue. And I began to understand even from half a word or a look.
And children too would call me names. Firstly, because my father was a
pastor and secondly, because he was in prison. And naturally it's very
clear for a child and we were taught at school and even at home it was
sometimes said that only thieves and such like are put in prison. And suddenly
my father ...is in prison. And when my mother said that it's not true,
that father hasn't done anything, that what has been done to him is all
wrong and so on, I couldn't quite believe it. And how can it be that it's
wrong? It's difficult to understand, I didn't have enough sense to analyse
it in detail or test it out" (Skultans, 109)
The development of the syndrome of double-facedness was one of
the main characteristics of the Sovietization of cultural life in the Baltic
countries. In the first Soviet decade it functioned through a dialogue
between the past that seemed ever more beautiful as it drifted farther
away, and the severe present. People were psychologically not ready to
forget a memory of the independent nation-state, at the same time they
did not want to remain losers in abruptly altered social circumstances.
The double-facedness of this decade was a compromise version of the accommodation
of temporally dislocated and substantially oppositional social scales of
value.
Lilian (b.1932), a student in Tartu in the early 1950s remembers:
"All of us lied to the personnel manager all the time and this was no ethical
sin. My father was in prison as a enemy of nation, I told to the personnel
that I had recanted him, but actually it was not so. I visited my father
2-3 times a year in the Patarei prison, on those occasions father taught
me how to live on. So he told me not to choose literature, he said, take
the languages; so I specialised in Finno-Ugric languages.
Marxism was even interesting to some extent. At that time I did
not distinguish between fraud and truth. A young lecturer taught us political
economy, in our opinion he spoke like a dissident. However, he committed
a suicide later. Then the university was still full of old lecturers who
eagerly spoke what was considered "right". We understood very well that
they were playing a double game, still willing to give us reasonable education
through facts. "
Jaan (b.1939) who went to high school in the period of late Stalinism
and early "thaw" described his inner feelings at that time as follows:
"I was not a self-destroyer and did not belong to any dissident organisation.
We tried to live a double life all the time: a lot of what was prohibited
was actually allowed. We said that abstractionism did not exist in our
Soviet society and actually spoke of abstractionism in full voice. We arranged
an exhibition of the abstractionism of Adamson-Eric in our class. The party
boss came into the class and asked strictly what sort of art this was supposed
to be. We answered him innocently that this was class art and he was fully
satisfied with the answer, praising the beauty of this art.
Parents were of course frightened all the time that the children
might mix up the "records". In our opinion the biggest and most awkward
game that all grown-ups played were the Soviet elections. Everybody knew
that this was a farce, and yet played along. At the same time everybody
knew what was good and what was bad."
Every new generation faced the Soviet mentality in their own
way. The youth of the 1950s was already much more receptive to red ideas
than their predecessors. Inge who was born in 1928 expressed her attitude
towards the next generation as follows:
"We had gone to school during the Estonian time, but the next
generation had a much stronger faith in socialism. I met this generation
when I was practising at the Tartu Teacher's Training Institute as a fourth-year
student of pedagogics. These were the last grades of high school, they
had a very strong young communists' organisation and, so it seemed to me,
a strong and sincere faith in socialism. They were all very good pupils
and worked closely together. The class organised various campaigns, for
example, against the wearing of rings as a bourgeois survival. They had
created quite a special mentality there, later they were disappointed in
many things and the swing went down.
By the second half of the 1950s the mental atmosphere in the
Baltic countries had Sovietized to such an extent that those returning
from the Siberian exile had difficulties of finding a place within their
native society. Both those who fled to the west and those sent to Siberia
had taken with them a memory of pastoral native places and, living far
away, that latter had become an idyllic myth. However, those who escaped
Russia did not find the "good old Estonian (Latvian) time in the country
where they returned. Latvian schoolgirl Anna speaks about the clash of
expectations and new reality in her consciousness: " I just couldn't understand
that here in Latvia where people supposed to sing, that mother was crying
again. That I couldn't admitted to school, that no school would accept
me because I had been deported - I was some sort of criminal. Of course,
my relatives got involved and we persuaded them that it had all been a
mistake... I spoke with an accent and wrote very badly, I should have gone
into the fourth class, but, in fact, I started in the third. Of course,
children are merciless. At school I remember that children called me Russian.
But at the same time they wanted me to help them with their Russian lessons...
My preconception of a bright and sparking Latvia began to crumble" (Skultans,
105)
Cultural assimilation usually takes place in the third generation
of migrants. The same can be argued as for generations growing up in their
native country under changed political circumstances. For the generation
of post-war babies notions as fatherland, the Estonian time, freedom etc.
acquired completely new meanings. The simultaneity of two cultural configurations
was for them no longer an agonising problem of personal identity, it was
rather a bricollage, an interesting game, a gymnastics between double meanings.
Fatherland was also the Soviet Union that was simultaneously equal with
a country grandmother, idyllic nature (pastorality) as well as the care
of uncle Stalin who loved all Soviet children (paternality). Freedom meant
first of all shirking some strictly established norms, sometimes it even
felt like adventure. It was very difficult to understand what was the difference
between the Civil War and the War of Independence, who fought against whom
after all and in the name of what was all this done. The so-called indigenous
double-thinking of the "thaw" generation did not develop by itself, in
them the identity crisis of their parents as the youth of the period of
independence, that gained ground in 1940, was revived in a new form.
Many parents tried to behave sparing their offspring and simply
stayed silent about what happened in earlier times. By the second half
of the 1950s it had become evident that the Soviet power would not end
today or tomorrow and thus it made no sense to intimidate the new generation
with dissident stories. Besides, one was afraid of children's naive desire
of prating, they could start to explain matters that were dangerous to
the welfare of the home and the family in some unsuitable place or to an
alien person.
The story of Toomas (b. 1947) gives a wonderful picture of a
world perceived in two ways:
"I come from a small town where everybody knows everybody. One
did not speak much about the Republic of Estonia in my circles. I knew
something vaguely, but I rather remember a strange inner feeling that the
Republic of Estonia is worth defending. A portrait of Päts and other
relics were hidden somewhere into the house. There were many books in French
at home. During the first Russian occupation my grandfather had been elected
chairman of some kind of a trade union. He had even written a really "red"
play. As a matter of fact, his world-view was really socialist, this was
usual for an intellectual of those times. He was not a communist, but simply
loyal to the red world-view. As the occupations changed, he was, of course,
arrested by the Self-Defence, put into prison and finally shot by the Germans.
During the German occupation one looked down on our family, at first Estonians
regarded the Germans as saviours. As the second Russian occupation came,
things became even worse with our family, because grandfather's body did
not come out anywhere. Grandmother was shown a number of corpses that had
been dug out, but she could not say on any occasion that namely the one
was her husband. The small town started to regard grandmother as a traitor's
wife, grandfather became a mock-hero. Actually he had had a really good
artist's hand, and one had even mentioned a possibility that he might teach
at "Pallas". Now his artist's image was forgotten, the native place recognized
him neither as a hero nor as a victim of the Red or the Germans. Grandmother
started to receive pension from the Soviet rule for her husband and this
helped us a lot economically. From time to time she procured extra money
from the ministry and indeed got some. As a rule, the extra money was used
for celebrating birthdays: then one decided whether to eat well or buy
champagne. Usually we bought champagne for the money received on the account
of my murdered and derided grandfather. Such was our double-faced life.
Let's add the vision of Indrek (b.1943) of the relationship between
the past and the present:
"At home father and mother did not speak anything about the Republic
of Estonia, its political system or about how good life had been then or
how was the War of Independence held within our hearing. This was taboo.
I think that my father and mother did not want to endanger the family.
They obviously had seen so much of what Stalinism could do and they were
frightened. Information about the Republic of Estonia arrived to me only
through official school textbooks. However, some of the boys had a hidden
"Years of Suffering of the Estonian People" at home, I must have read it
some time between the age of ten and twelve. This was something I did not
believe could exist at all. It was thrilling and was sure that everything
had really happened that way. But I have been pragmatical since boyhood
and so I took this fact simply as a part of history. It was something like
then it had been that way and now it is this way. As a twelve-year-old
boy I did not make myself a problem that I should have started to fight
for what had been and against what was existing at that very moment. That
time simply did not exist any more, achieving a relationship with it would
have been equal to a wish to jump onto the Moon."
Essentially the first generation of course wanted to reduce the
disruption between the two cultural configurations for the third generation
as their children. The paradox is that their own identity split even more
by doing so. Namely in the course of bringing up their children the double-thinking
obtruded on the Päts-generation revealed itself most clearly. During
10-15 years two conceptions of history had developed in their consciousness:
firstly, what they had made through themselves in person, and, secondly,
what they were officially suggested to remember. Such a splitting of the
past simultaneously brought about a secondary disruption between the worldviews
of them and their children. For years one lived under mental pressure where
one remembered one thing, but told something else to one's children. Thus,
the long-lasting double-thinking gradually brought about an inner feeling
of alienation. HarperCollins Dictionary of Sociology defines alienation
as powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness as well as a feeling of
inner alienation and self-estrangement (The HarperCollins, 14).
Indeed, in 1940 the generation who was raised in the enthusiasm
of independence, was sharply deprived of their earlier normal social and
political environment, from the usual norms of consumption, from the internalised
mental values etc. A feeling of hostility to alien circumstances and political
events that ruthlessly rolled over, deepened in them. But since they could
not express this hostility in any way in public, several representatives
of this generation were gradually transformed from an active and creative
subject to a passive and manipulative social object. The self-estranged
age-cohort closed into inner migration created and everyday reality for
their children that was from the beginning based on legalized double-facedness.
The double mental standards that by the generation of fathers
resulted in the deformation and alienation of personal identity, laid the
basis to bricollage in the sons' generation. Bricollage is a cultural process
of improvisation or adaptation whereby objects, signs or practises are
appropriated into different meaning systems and cultural settings and,
as a result, are resignified. The subversive functions of bricollage
have to be emphasized, whereby elements of dominant or taken-for-granted
culture are given new critical meanings, often by ironic or surreal juxtaposition.
The young generation that started to reshape the cultural landscapes of
the Baltic countries from the early 1960s were no longer distressed by
identity crisis (G1) or fears of living and everyday white lies (G2). Regarding
double-thinking as an inevitable cultural norm, the post-Stalinist generation
still questioned whether it was the only thinkable norm. Although Sovietness
was already the dominant cultural configuration due to circumstances, one
could still grin at it, using elements borrowed from the configuration
of the Estonian time (for example, Estonian soldiers' songs as students'
dirty ballads to upset "red" lecturers). Carrying the phenomena signified
with "right names" within Sovietness into a changed context (for example,
calling a cock or a boar "Tshapayev") that resulted in another inversion
of "own" and "alien" was even more effective.
Thus, by the time when Stalinist terror was replaced by liberalizing
Socialism, a triple transformation of double thinking had been made through
in Estonia (Latvia). Such a transformation had its own dialectical way
of development. For the first generation (G1) the opposition of "own" and
"alien" was complete, the re-signification of the dominance of cultural
configurations that came along with the coup d'etat caused a strong identity
crisis. From the viewpoint of the second generation (G2) "own" and "alien"
were clearly distinguishable, but operationally the shifting of the borders
between them was useful. It had to do with a typical second stage of cultural
assimilation where the marginalizing subject rise to relate to both the
dominant and the concurrent cultures with equal attention. In the third
generation (G3) "own" and "alien" had actually already changed places and
if favourable outer conditions had lasted double thinking may have disappeared,
replaced by full Sovietization. However, the strategy of the "iron hand"
that gained ground in the second half of the 1960s in order to strengthen
the Socialist camp (especially the Czechoslovakia events in 1968) laid
a basis to the revival of double standards. Despite the generational differences
in double thinking the borders between Estonian-mindedness and Soviet-mindedness
gradually took more clear contours again. Double-thinking continued, but
as a game of conscious mixing up of meanings was added, the strengthening
of national identity received a fresh impetus.
Aarelaid, Aili. 1998. Ikka kultuurile mõeldes. "Virgela",
Tallinn.
Buell, Frederick. 1994. National Culture and the New Global System.
The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London.
The HarperCollins Dictionary of Sociology 1991. Ed. by Jary, David
and Jary Julia. HarperCollins Publishers, New York.
Hudson, Robert B. and Binstock, Robert H.. 1976. "Political Systems
and Aging." Pp. 369-400 - In: Handbbook of Aging and Social Science, Robert
H. Binstock and Ethel Sharnas, eds. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. 1994. Ed by Tim
O`Sullivan , John Hartley, Danny Saunders Martin Montgomery John Fiske.
London & New York, Routledge.
Mannheim, Karl. 1952. "The Problem of Generations".- In: Essays on
the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
The Russian Mentality - Lexicon.. 1995. .Ed. by Andrzej Lazari. Katowice.
Skultans, Vieda. 1998. "Testimony of lives", "Routledge".
A discussion paper for the 4th European Conference of Sociology,
Will Europe Work?, Amsterdam, 18-21 August 1999.
A session on Class, work, identity of the Research Network on Biographical
Perspectives on European Societies, Friday 20.00-21.30.
Dr VladimirAndrle E-mail:
va2@york.ac.uk
Department of Sociology
The University of York
York
YO10 5DD
UK
FREE TO CITE
______________________________________________________________________
Key words
Life stories. Czech Republic. Business élite. Communism. Post-
communism. Social mobility.
(sorry, but the tables are a mess! JPR)
Table 1: Respondents' status in the communist regime (rows) and their
post-communist positions (columns)
During 1991-5
_______________________
Before November 1989
Overall
sample Members of
government
and/or
parliament,
deputy ministers,
chiefs of important
state institutions Business
owners,
directors
and chief
executives,
and private
farmers New-era
experience
includes
neither
`high
politics' nor
business
Ministerial members of
government, central
political staff, high-
ranking police officers etc.
8
0
3
5
Directors, deputy
directors, chairmen of
state enterprises and
other economic
organisations
10*
1
9
1
Activists of dissident
circles, Charter 77
signatories, cultural
`underground'
17*
10
3
7
Ordinary career pattern,
neither high functionary
nor dissident
19*
1
11
8
Too young for an adult
career pattern to have
developed under the old
regime
9*
1
2
7
Foreign nationals - not
resident in
Czechoslovakia before
1990
4
1
1
2
Total
67*
14
29
30
* The number in the `overall sample'
column is smaller than the sum of the
numbers in the rest of the row because
some respondents had a period in
high politics before going into business.
Characteristics
of the business respondents
I have classified the business sub-sample
into three categories: `large',
`small but prosperous', and `small and
struggling'. The businesses
classified as `large' have assets extending
well beyond merely making a
good living for their owners and their
families. This could be ascertained
independently of what the respondents
said about them. Firms that were
household names quoted on the stock-exchange
were a clear case in point;
so were farms whose land holdings were
such as to make them the
dominant institution in their district.
In addition, three respondents were
included in this élite category
although they were neither stock-exchange
quoted nor extensively landed, but they
owned whole chains of diverse
businesses with visible operations and
tangible assets. The rest of the
business respondents were classified
as either `small but prosperous' or
`small and struggling' on the basis
of what they said about their situation.
Table 2 compares the former communist
managers and functionaries with
the rest of the business sub-sample,
in terms of their distribution among
the three categories.
Table 2: Business respondents' pre-Revolutionary
background (rows)
and current economic status (columns)
Large business
Small but prosperous
Small and struggling
Communist
regime's high
functionaries and
managers
9
2
1
All others
2
9
6
Total
11
11
7
The table corroborates what has been
generally well known and
widely commented upon both within the
country and internationally (e.g.,
Clark and Soulsby 1996). The terms of
the `velvet revolution' included a
decision `not to be like them' (nebudeme
jako oni), meaning that the new
democracy would not replicate the communist
revolution in its
discrimination against the formerly
privileged classes. Former communist
careerists would have the same rights
as any other citizen, including the
new rights of economic entrepreneurship.
Furthermore, the procedures for
economic privatisation that were put
into place enabled former communist
managers to benefit not only from their
technical expertise and general
drive, which they often genuinely had,
but also from their skills in
cultivating and using personal connections,
which had been always crucial
to managerial success in communist economies
(e.g., Andrle 1976). The
exact ways in which our ex-communist
business respondents converted
their old positions into new success
were various, but the central
importance of informal social networks
came across strongly in all their
biographical self-accounts. These descriptions
of private capital formation,
however, are a topic better saved for
another article, for there was another,
more surprising feature of their life
story construction that we wish to
explore here. It concerns the degree
to which the respondents' life stories
conformed to the conventions of written
auto/biographies in their opening
parts.
The European
literary auto/biography has a canonical form which
requires the subject to be described,
in the opening chapters, as a child
living within a family and among other
influential persons, in a certain
place and social milieu (Denzin 1989:18).
The genre requires the writer `to
anchor' (Denzin 1989: 39) the reality
of the subject in this way, and to
proceed to develop it in a narrative
of emblematic stages and events
marking the subject's progression from
the private to the public sphere,
from home to school to work (Bruner
1995:170). It would be unwise simply
to assume that oral narratives should
model themselves on this literary
self-accounting convention, but its
power is evident in the life story
interviews conducted, for example, by
my students at York. Although the
respondents are briefed in a way which
avoids any prescription as to where
their narrative should start and what
kind of information it should relate,
they typically start with the canonical
anchoring of themselves in the
family, locale and social class of their
childhood. (`I was born in 1950, at
home, in a council house in Acomb, that's
in York, so I'm a local lass
[laughter]. My brother was five…') Omitting
this information altogether is
very unusual. In our Czech project,
even the initial 17 interviews, in which
the respondents were asked to give an
account of what happened to them
only in the recent period since 1989,
included 10 cases where the
respondent volunteered biographical
anchoring data at least in passing. It
has come as a surprise, therefore, that
the next 50 interviews, which were
framed as life story ones, included
15 cases (30 per cent) where the
respondent constructed their self-account
without giving any information
about their parents or the kind of family
they were from. These respondents
could be said to have made a strong
decision not to abide by the
biographical anchoring convention. Moreover,
out of the total of 45
respondents who did say something about
their childhood and parents,
only 25 included a clear indication
of their parents' or grandparents' social
position during the First Republic (1918-38),
the period that the current
public consensus regards as a positive
precedent, when Czech society was
unfettered by political repression.
There is a good
reason why social class background was missing
from so many respondents' self-accounts.
Such information used to have a
heavy bureaucratic-political significance
under the communist regime,
especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when
most of our respondents were
growing up. In the political bureaucracy's
view, a citizen coming out of a
working-class stock was probably a reliable
supporter of the communist
state and a generally sound salt of
the earth type. Those hailing from the
first republic `bourgeoisie', on the
other hand, had to be watched lest they
indulge in exerting an undermining influence
within their environments.
Emphasising one's working class origins
was in many practical contexts of
the communist state tantamount to demanding
a privileged consideration.
Those from other backgrounds did their
best to play their social origins
down in official self-descriptions,
but some of them also revelled in their
superior First Republic culture and
breeding in private among close friends.
At the time of our interviews, reporting
a working class background might
have been heard as a style of identity
construction echoing the defeated
communist regime. As Table 3 (overleaf)
shows, the respondents who did
observe the biographical anchoring convention
mostly had other than a
manual working class or poor farming
background to report.
Table
3: Respondents who reported their social class background: their
ancestors' status during the First Republic
(rows), and their own status
at the time of the interview (columns)
Own status in 1994-5
______________________
Ancestors' status
prior to 1939
Large
business,
high
politics Smaller
prosperous
business,
cultural
élite Graduate
professional
employment Failing
business,
or
downwar
dly
mobile Other
`First Republic's great
bourgeoisie'
(prvorepubliková velko-
bur oazie)
3
0
0
0
0
Middle class - graduates,
army officers, white collar
specialists, small factory
owners, farmers (sedláci)
6
4
1
0
0
Petty business, self-
employed ( ivnostníci)
1
2
0
2
0
Industrial workers, poor
smallholders
1
1
2
2
1
The table also shows that the respondents
who reported upper or
middle-class roots in the First Republic
were currently doing well
themselves, while those reporting lower-class
ancestry were a mixture in
terms of their current fortunes. Finally,
if we look at who is included in
Table 3, we see a striking characteristic
of the business sub-sample. Only a
minority of the overall sample (26 out
of 67) included themselves in the
table by giving information on their
parents' or grandparents' position in
the First Republic's society. Of all
the categories making up the rows and
columns of Table 1, there is only one
which actually has a majority of its
members including themselves in Table
3: 16 out of the 29 business
persons did.
The business respondents' propensity to be forthcoming on their pre-
communist class lineage becomes even
more striking when considered in
the light of their current standing,
as shown in Table 4.
Table 4: Business respondents' pre-communist
social origins (rows)
and their own current business status
(columns)
Own status in 1994-5
________________________________________
Ancestors' status prior to 1939
Large
business
Small but
prosperous
Small and
struggling
`First Republic's great bourgeoisie'
2
1*
0
Middle class
6
3
0
Petty business, self-employed
1
0
1
Industrial workers and poor smallholders
0
1*
1
No First Republic social lineage was reported
2
6
5
Total
11
11
7
*The respondent counted in this cell
was counted in the first column in Table 3
because, in addition to having a business,
he was in high politics at the time of the
interview.
Élite business respondents were
the most forthcoming, and they had the
classiest pre-communist lineage to report.
There is just
one more feature to add to this pattern of the
respondents' self-accounts. The élite
business respondents were not only
the highest-class group in terms of
their pre-communist social lineage; they
were also high career achievers under
the communist regime, as we have
seen from Table 2. Out of the 9 business
élite persons who used to be high
communist functionaries or managers
(top left cell of Table 2), 2 had their
pre-communist roots in the upper class
and 5 in the solid middle class,
while the remaining 2 gave no information
on their social origins. Both the
élite businessmen who had upper-class
pre-communist lineage as well as
communist nomenklatura experience recalled
that their fathers suffered
imprisonment during the 1950s, the period
when the communist regime
was in its early militant phase. The
communist regime was always
notorious for its class-discriminatory
policies, among its own citizens who
did not have a politically sound proletarian
background to claim, and
among the western publics, too. That
our ex-communist business-élite sub-
sample turns out to be particularly
bourgeois in its social lineage appears
to run counter to that notoriety, as
does perhaps the fact that out of the 14
respondents reporting upper or middle-class
background (top two rows in
Table 3), 12 are university graduates.
Maybe attention to the stories
themselves will throw some light on
the buoyant class phenomenon that
our statistical cross-tabulations intimate.
Paper presented at the Research Network Biographical Perspectives
on European Societies
4th European Conference of Sociology, August 18 - 21, 1999, Amsterdam
Research Director
D. Soc. Sci.
Finnish Youth Research Network
Olympic Stadium
South Curve, A-gate
FIN-00250 Helsinki
(tel.): +358-9-348 24327
email: tommi.hoikkala@alli.fi
When I began the task of writing about work and the baby boomer generation,
I saw many dangers lurking in the shadows. I considered how I might escape
the trap of painting a stereotypical picture of the workaholic mania inherent
in the Finns' survival story, in which a person's human value was dependent
on his or her productivity. In the process of this consideration I came
to the conclusion that in avoiding this stereotype it must still be admitted
that workaholism (and survival) is at the root of everything. But still
I was determined to get straight to the point and avoid any simplistic
or subjectively charged readings of the material, and I decided to seek
a variable classification of the baby boomers' relations to work. No general
speeches about the significance of work to Finland's large post-war generation
as a whole outside of the individual life situations – the concrete forms
of employment, education and life experience involved in each case. I have
thus investigated the significance of work in different phases of life,
for different genders and within different socio- cultural backgrounds.
In this article I dig the theme of work out of the life stories of fifty-year-olds
and tie these stories together in terms of a broader (sociological) discussion
and picture of Finland and Finnish society. At the very least this implies
consideration of age groups, generations and cultural transition. In the
process I have been able to penetrate the significance of work and its
social connections by means of the stories of this rather dominant age
group.
I will begin with a somewhat random collection of introductory statements
from basic autobiographical sketches(1) in which baby boomers describe
the bases, backgrounds and starting points for the directions their lives
have taken. Such introductions are important, in that they direct our attention
to the Finland which dominated the early lives of our country's baby boomers:
the distant horizon of the recent past.
(1) I tend to say that my roots are in crofter stock. I was born in
Köyliö in ‘50. I was born in the same village as both of my parents
and all of my grandparents except one. Köyliö has been governed
by a manor house, and the vast majority of the farms have been crofter
spreads. If I remember right, my own father had a bit of payment work to
do when he was young. My parents were both born in ‘21, went to the same
elementary school, had their confirmation training together and then at
twenty-six years old they got married. And maybe this kind of a background,
which I was lucky to have, gives me the feeling of basic personal security
which I have. But of course there's also – if you think about this sort
of background – just as great a risk of the environment being too close
and suffocating. But the basic premise was that they both came from the
crofters' cottage. I use that term without belittling this background,
but in fact it wasn't a farm properly speaking; just a very small spread.
My father worked as keeper of the co-op store in the next village and until
she retired my mother ran this small agricultural operation, caring for
the cows and doing very hard work. Besides all of this I was an only child,
which I understand was a conscious choice that my parents made on account
of it not being possible for them to put too many children through school.
This too shows a basic premise from the start that education was to be
stressed and valued. (Raili, b. 1950, personnel manager)(2)
(2) I lived my first twenty years in Mikkeli and went through a my
schooling there: grammar school, five grades of middle school or secondary
school and then two years of commercial training, which I finished in ‘67.
I was adopted into the family I grew up in at a year and a half old, and
there I was the only child. In my original family I have other siblings,
but naturally I hadn't been in touch with them in any way until very recently.
Father's dead but mother's still alive. I had a pretty normal childhood.
Nothing spectacular to be mentioned there. Just the same as for any kid,
sports were always close to my heart, and I've gone right up to the top
in sports, not as a player myself but as a coach. (Kari, b.1947, consultant)
(3) I was born in mid-Ostrobothnia, the youngest of twelve children.
My mother was born in 1904; my father, in 1898. My childhood was in a farm
house, with my father working as a woodsman and my mother taking care of
the livestock and us kids. My older brothers had already moved away from
home by the time I was born. We were eight boys and four girls. My earliest
childhood memories are of my mother's fiftieth birthday and my sister's
wedding, when I was four years old. I got two new dresses, and they stuck
in my mind because they we picked them up on the morning when sis got hitched.
(Marja, b. 1947, nurse's aid, retired)
(4) This here's the house I was born in, where I still live and till
the soil. I was born to a farm family in ‘47. That there war had just ended
and my folks got married in ‘44 and moved out here to do a bit of farmin'.
My grandparents had bought the place for somewhere to live when they were
pretty old already in ‘39, and Pa wanted to farm when the war ended.
So it starts with just a few acres of cleared land and then another twenty-five/thirty
acres of woods, outa which they went to get a living. I'd say my childhood
was pretty modest, money wise at least, since my folks didn't own anything
else of any value. They both just had their two hands and the set out to
farm this here land. Then they got a bit more land so that things got better
in that way. My whole life has kinda been in the ways of these parts and
workin' this land, where I was raised with my sister. I've got a younger
sister, sister three years younger'n me. (Juhani, b. 1947, farmer)
(5) I'm native born to Tampere. Both my folks been there for generations.
I've got two brothers, one a couple years older, one a couple years younger.
Dad was workin' in as a machine man the factory. His life whole life
changed during the war ‘cause he applied to study and got in, but then
he got back from the war and there's a family with one kid already.
Mom was at home until when my little brother started school. Poverty and
misery following the war describe my childhood pretty much dead on. Neither
of my folks had any great luck, so what they had was what they got for
themselves with their own work. (Inkeri, b. 1947, kindergarten teacher)
(6) I was born in Helsinki's Women's Clinic, the younger of two brothers.
My brother's three and a half years older than me. My childhood then was
over in Pakila [a district towards the north end of Helsinki] where we
moved when I was three, and where I spent all my youth. I had lots of buddies
and for some reason they were always younger than me. Folks called me king
of the little boys when I didn't seem to fit in with the bigger kids. I
don't really remember much of my childhood, but I always remember that
my father and mother had just started a business and that it took so much
of their time that they didn't get home until ten or eleven at night. We
had a housekeeper living with us. We had two rooms and a kitchen and there
were four of our own plus the maid, but we all fit. (Simo, b. 1948, representative)
(7) I was born in the southern part of Savo and my home was way out
in the countryside. My parents' background was that my mother was a so-called
Karelian fling; she ended up losing her own home and family and getting
to know my father after the Winter War. There's a big brother and big sister
in my family, and then I've got a little sister besides. My father came
from the leading family of the village, and before the big break-up it
was a seriously large place: thousands and thousands of acres. After the
war my father had to give up farming because of back problems, so he sold
the manor to his siblings and we moved to a woodsman's place. He was a
foreman in a plywood factory, a warehouse manager and these types of things
besides working the forest. My mother was a housewife. I myself had very
long trips to school. For grammar school at first it was only two and a
half kilometers, which I walked or skied in order to learn. When it was
time to start secondary school it was by no means obvious that kids from
my class would be going – this milieu, besides being out in the countryside,
had a bit of local industry which employed the parents of most of my classmates
– so going to secondary school was more rare. I of course was, by chance,
or actually not so much by chance, the best in my class, so the teacher
too saw it as obvious that I would go on to secondary. And my big brother
had already gone down that road, him being six years older than me, and
he was already close to finished with secondary school. (Seija, b. 1947,
educator)
These autobiographical introductions set the tone for their narrators'
entire perspective in life. The narrators touch on their places of birth,
order of birth and family, especially parents, often referring to their
education and their place in the geneological chain. Material related to
the theme of work is also laid out in the beginning of their stories, either
immediately or a little ways into things. The references sound familiar:
peasant life, Finnish agriculture, the astounding centrality of education,
migration, all kinds of honor bestowed upon the industriousness of Finland's
agrarian society (cf. Kortteinen 1982 & 1992; Roos 1987). In the beginning
of their stories more than one narrator speaks of the meagerness of his
or her origins – conditions were poor and modest, which anticipates the
place which the last half-century has brought us to. Speaking of the nature
of the starting point seems to emphasize that the narrators are the children
of those of the war generation and the post-war reconstruction generation
(Roos 1987). I wish to emphasize both the chain of generations and the
idea of societal change by way of the generation gap. The openings of these
life stories give us a glimpse of what Finland was actually like just after
the war, in the 1940s and 50s.
The interviews which I conducted were not thematically about work;
the narrators speak of their entire lives (up to the time of the interview)
from the perspective of middle age. This was done at approximately 50 years
old, at which time one can say where one has come from, what has been done
and where one might be going. It is also significant that these narratives
are told in a critical and evaluative way – albeit to highly variable degrees
(Hyvärinen et al 1998). The narratives are thus told from a present
day perspective, with work per se not being brought up in the interviews;
it rather just came up by itself in the course of talking about their lives
in total. This too is variable; some with psychological sensitivity stress
the history of their frames of mind, while others focus on their career
developments – though including some levity – en route towards enlightenment
and success in a very work-centered sort of way. Gender plays an interesting
role: if the narrators of psychologically sensitive tales tend to be women,
narrators of work and career centered stories are of both genders, women
steam-rolling their way through life just as madly as men ever did. Accomplishment
and survival in Finland are not just the fate of men then, but generally
binding cultural realities.
In terms of this article though, the exact dividing line between cohorts
is not of primary importance(5). If the presenters of the biographies behind
this material were, with two exceptions, born 1945-50, we can speak with
certainty of their experiences reflecting those of the baby boomer generation,
and on this basis we can evaluate the differences between the experiences
of this generation and those of generations which preceded and followed
it in an entirely sufficient manner. This is the case where the rule of
thumb is to categorize those (born and) raised after the Second World War
according to their own given frameworks. My investigative interest is thus
more analytic than demographic.
Analogy emphasizing quantity (the large generation) is certainly justified
and natural in relation to these groups. Baby boomers have been a highly
visible contingent, leaving their mark on all of the various institutions
of Finnish society (Karisto et al. 1997, 2). In the 1940s the maternity
counseling service network had to be expanded and in the fifties more elementary
schools had to be built so that all of the boomers would fit in. Vocational
schools and higher education as well were expanded to accommodate this
group, though the actual expansion on education was realized only after
they had finished (Virtanen 1998a, 214). In 1948 the state began to pay
child care supplements, a sign – analyzed in retrospect – that developments
for their benefit have always been connected with the growth and expansion
of the welfare state. Many of the educated members of this cohort found
jobs within the expanded service sectors of state and municipal government.
(But what will happen at the point of their retirement?) As they migrated
towards the cities the need arose for more housing and other services,
and so the Finnish suburbs were born.
In reference to the baby boomers, the search for a unique shared experience brings our thoughts back first of all to post-war Finland. The provocative title of Marja Tuominen's doctoral dissertation, We are All Children of Warriors, crystallizes a lot. The metaphor opens a serious horizon of experience into post-war authority landscapes, the hierarchical structure of day to day life and working life, the patriarchal relationship between the genders, as well as perhaps the whole nation's spiritual condition. Fathers had the final say. The fathers of most of those born between 1945 and 1957 were in fact combat veterans which returned from war to be the masters of old or new (relocation) farmsteads.
Other factors uniting the Baby Boomers are related to age groups' maturing processes, (changing) conditions for socialization, changes in the system of education and waves of migration from the countryside to the cities. Youth culture first struck in Finland as a broad phenomenon on the wings of the entertainment industry for this cohort. Of course it was not the same for everyone; youth could be stretched for a university student in an entirely different way than for someone whose education ended and working life began at 15 years old(8). Thus the rise of youth culture in Finland was most clearly a story of class divisions (Heiskanen & Mitchell 1985). Matti Virtanen speaks (1997, 3) of the birth of a perpetual youth culture, the elements of which included a homemade mix of Finnish rural dance traditions (with names like "jenkka" and "humppa"), the breakthrough of Western pop culture (rock ‘n roll), the specter of free leisure time (the Saturday prayer movement)(9), dating (an eroticized culture of male-female relationships) and a more or less careful drunken partying orientation. Certain conditions for the rise of this youth culture and the birth of perpetual youth culture were economic growth, a rising standard of living, the gradual breakthrough of consumer culture, but also the expansion of education and the educational institutions. One sign of the birth of perpetual youth culture was that it procrastinated entry into working life, more for some than for others.
The major migration into urban (and suburban) areas characterizes the
baby boomers. This migration brought about a structural change in society
– cf. sociologists' talk of the Great Migration – the geographical-physical
dimension of connecting movement. Of the boomer cohort being analyzed here
– those born 1946-1950 – 77 % were born in the countryside, and yet today
the majority of them live in cities (Valkonen & Nikander 1990, 78).
The reason for moving had to do with work, but that was not the only factor.
If (long) periods of education are added into this equation, we arrive
at increased social mobility, social advancement, new professional structures,
clerical work and the birth of a new middle class(10), the recruiting base
for which was among the rural-born baby boomers.
During the time that the early baby boomers have grown up and aged (0-53 years old) a significant change has taken place in the organization of society and everyday life in the Western world, and the generation of change has formed a central turning point in this process. In Finland this change took place relatively late, but rather dramatically. One manifestation of the transition is the shift in the roles of the sexes. If in the 1940s men still had a clear power advantage over women in many areas of life, then this advantage seriously began to crumble in the sixties at the latest, especially in the Nordic countries(11). What J. P. Roos (1996) calls father's law, a man's patriarchal right to make the final decisions throughout the entire culture and society, has lost its power in the post-war period.
During the life of this generation of change the family has changed from being a unit of production (cf. agriculture) into a privatized and intimate unit of consumption and emotion, often centered around the children. The work and rationality based marriages of the war and rebuilding generation were being replaced by the emotional unions of the baby boomers. Relatively widespread divorce began, which still did not mean the death of the institutions of home life, the family or even marriage (Jallinoja 1997, 66). The relationship of work and family has also been shifting during the lifetime of the generation of change. Women have become more committed to being wage earners, so that the model of the two-income family has been the basis of Finnish social politics. As the significance of work outside of the home has increased for baby boomer women, the significance of work as the basis of the male identity has been diluted. Thus the family has arisen as the central arena of a man's life in a new way. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that other areas of life have risen to compete with work in a man's priorities in life: being a work-centered, distant father and disciplinary agent, as the fathers of the war generation were perceived as being(12), just doesn't cut it any more (Roos & Rotkirch 1997 ).
Work has still been the measure of a man, but it is no longer sufficient unto itself. Often new external requirements have come at men from the direction of women. The position of the man in the family is not what it used to be, and women's regard for men, as well as men's own concepts of what they are able and responsible to do in the family and life together, have changed. For baby boomer men being buried in work in the same way as their fathers were is no longer remunerated with the sort of prestige at home that their fathers had. They have been in an interesting and contradictory melting pot: they have had a picture from their own fathers and the father's law model, but in their relationships with the liberated women of their own generation they can't get by with that old framework.
Change has affected relations between the genders in the working place as well. Crudely put, during the time of the generation of change men have lost their automatic legitimate right to lead and command. In the home fathers lost their status as provider and their authority as head of the family – and women lost the institutional status of housewife (Tigerstedt 1996) if ever there was such a thing in Finland on account of the high percentage of women which have been in the labor force throughout the twentieth century.
If the change is critiqued, one sees it as a crisis for men, as the personal fulfiller of another person, as emotional support. Whether this is a change articulated by women or the result of men fulfilling their own desires is an interesting question. In the following are the voices of a few of Finland's baby boomers, some of which paint a picture of the generation of change thesis and some of which don't seem to give a damn about it. We find some confusion, but also the feeling of having discovered new lands.
Kari Metsänen (b. 1947) – second among the autobiographical
introductions given above – is not especially confused, but speaks in a
way that brings to mind Robert Brannon's (1976) list of the principles
of market masculinity. According to these, the requirements of masculinity
can be condensed down into four mottoes: (a) "No sissy stuff", (b) "be
a big wheel", (c) be a sturdy oak and (d) "give 'em hell" . By operating
according to these standards, one accrues – it is often assumed in Western
culture – success, fortune and power. This is self-confident king-of-the-hill
manliness: fighting, accomplishing and pushing towards the top. Metsänen
went through basic commercial training and has held many positions in retail
management. In addition to these he has acted as a sports coach, going
all the way to the national championship level in his sport, and he has
been a leader of professional organizations in his field. Traveling abroad
has been his favorite way to spend his vacations.
Metsänen's story is a work-centered tale of career advancement, has he moves from one municipality to another in pursuit of more challenging and interesting jobs. His style of speaking is crude and direct, as can be seen in what he has to say about food, for instance: "I like basic sausage. I like pork – pork shoulder in particular, which is one of the fatty parts. And I like cream, I like butter. I use them in cooking and drink beer with my food. I learned that while I was in Germany, and I ain't planning to give it up until I have to. I gotta do something for my condition." Concerning his only child, a daughter coming into adulthood ("Things ain't bad between us now that she don't live at home any more.") Metsänen speaks with his friends in a contentious sort of way: "Something's gotta be said about the way that girl spends money," but on the other hand, "we particularly want her to be able to travel." He respects his wife because she is "the person who has had the most influence" in his life.
Metsänen's life, however, has not been just a straight forward pursuit of greater and greater success. The major recession of the nineties forced the large corporation which he was working for as a marketing director to reorganize. "All eleven managers were dismissed and all of the staff battalions were dismissed and five hundred other management level officials and workers were let go." In other words, Metsänen got canned. There followed a personal crisis which he survived by doing yard work for a few months: "Ditch digging sweated it all out." He then founded his own company in the same field, which he is running quite successfully today, though in the mid-nineties the threat of it bottoming out still haunted him. Metsänen sees himself as having had a good proper upbringing which has been of great value to him later in life, not the least in working life. His proper upbringing, "starts with honoring parents, honoring the clock, which means if you agree to come home at such and such a time, then you stick to it. Rather strict compared with these days." Metsänen says that this is the basis of his own strictness as a manager and coach: "I'm used to giving orders."
It's hard to say to what extent we can speak of Metsänen as part of the generation of change, since in many respects his way of speaking is mostly made up of traditional masculine influences. It is the familiar voice of the straight-forward tale of survival, conquest and accomplishment. The metaphors for corporate leadership are taken from military terminology (battalions), child raising practice is in the framework of traditional ideas (honoring parents), authority structures preferably hierarchical rather than based on equality and women are seen from just above. But: when it comes to describing the relationships between the genders and generations in more detail Metsänen's definition of masculine direct authoritativeness in some ways starts to cough and sputter. The expression becomes more emotional – fear (?), confusion, laughter, irony. Though he refers to himself as "domineering", the role divisions in his family are such that, "I try to give the orders but then in the end the wife makes the final decisions."
Metsänen has not raised his daughter according to the same principles that he himself was raised with. He talks of avoiding discipline ("I'm not so strict as what our mother was, maybe giving too many freedoms"). His pronoun usage also changes as he talks about child raising, from a first-person active to a third-person plural passive, which I interpret as meaning that the daughter's upbringing in the everyday routine sense has been primarily Mrs. Metsänen's territory. This is natural if and when Metsänen has focused his life on work according to the traditional father role-model. From the children's perspective the traditional war and rebuilding generation father has been a distant, feared and yet longed for character (Roos & Rotkirch 1997). I have noted points here were the thematic framework for what Metsänen has to say is discipline and the strictness/looseness of upbringing, which is a familiar (= traditional) authoritative provider-father paradigm. Work occupies most of his time, but when the father is home he is accustomed to giving the orders. Metsänen's attitude is clear, but it is another question how well it fits in with this day and age. Times change; young people, Metsänen believes, are too lazy these days, acting in school and in the army "like they're in a rest home – discipline is lost." But in so saying he takes on an air of doubtful resignation: "could be that this is nothing but old humbug, on account of my having been raised that way myself." The work-centered father's law has lost its grip, regardless of a man's personal ambitions and priorities.
If Metsänen speaks from the resources of market masculinity, there
seem to be clear reservations concerning women's equal value and potential
for professional advancement. He believes that it is "dangerous" for women
to be equal with men. Metsänen says that yes, he does respect female
leaders in working life, in principle, but he wouldn't like it if, "some
woman would try to boss me around." Metsänen's and market masculinity's
attitude of towards the question of the relationship between the genders
can be put into words as follows: "I wouldn't pay any mind a woman coming
to be my boss, especially a younger one, straight out of school, with long
nails and... sure they're nice enough, but... my friends can have them,
but not me. That much of a chauvinist I am." The changing view seen from
this sort of masculinity is that the world and its structures, especially
generational and gender structures, have shifted as though the viewer's
perspective is irrelevant, or they have moved in the least desired direction.
Change has happened, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Or
he can just hope that the division of labor in places doesn't put him under
a young woman. That would be too great a challenge. Still no aggressive
clinging to a past (?) model of masculinity is seen in Metsänen's
tale. The directness of the masculine style of narrative (also) includes
its breakage points. In terms of content he seems to be saying (cf. old
humbug): I am a traditional man, but life around me is from my perspective
getting less recognizable or even more uncomfortable. This in itself is
no problem if I can just be left in peace (followed with a touch of irony).
But female leaders are not acceptable for him personally. Thus Metsänen
would none too gladly work for the subject of our next case study, Sirkka
Aalto.
If the basic picture of women in biographical research (Vilkko 1997)
stresses women's habit of piecing together bits close personal relationships
and family matters of significance to themselves personally in their fragmentary
tales, even when the given theme would be work (Vilkko 1997), and if this
is seen as the basis of feminine narratives, then Sirkka Aalto's story
just doesn't fit into this genre at all. Since Aalto stresses women's and
men's equality and women's special leadership abilities, I call her an
equality-woman. After Tuija Saresmaa (1998, 244) her tale can also be seen
as the story of an equality-woman's life as a man, at least on the surface.
My close chapter summary(13) of Aalto's interview is laconic (but in the
end subject to doubt):
Aalto is a woman who has carved out a respectable career for herself in international social service administration, an organizational activist, succeeder-accomplisher, coming from a good middle-class background in a small rural center in eastern Finland. (At the fringe of the old middle-class: father a white-collar worker, mother also college educated, which was rather rare for the war and rebuilding generation; cf. Bourdieu: capital, distinctions and habitus). Aalto has launched out into the world from the position of little sister; she is quite gifted in languages and expresses a certain internationality. The picture includes a lot of working on her career, but not a hint of burnout. What is this lightness actually? The picture painted by Matti Kortteinen of the heavy Finnish survival ethos doesn't seem to apply to this lady's story. Aalto apparently belongs to the lucky-duck fraction of her generation: success in everything, her career never going any direction but up. Adult children – successful in their studies and their own lives of course – born and raised in the middle of building her career. But what was the man's role in Aalto's family constellation? The children seem to have been just this woman's own project, regardless of all of the emphasis on joint-custody after divorce and all. Aalto is a rare exception among the interviews conducted while collecting this material: the story invokes the question, is the old humbug about Roos's old wall of happiness still and in spite of everything a viable picture of the middle-class way of presenting their lives in an interview situation? On the basis of her story, this woman has not had very many problems in her life; her divorce from her husband, for example, described as though it wasn't the slightest problem. A certain sort of blending of work and life is also characteristic. On the other hand there are emotional descriptions of travel in the story, which the interviewee loves. Or is this problem-free progressive directness only the surface of the story (cf. Tuija Saresma's article in Kata Eskola's book 1998), the opening of which to a depth and to other levels than that of positive self-evaluation I as a man (cf. Rousseau's masculine directness) cannot read and find? The interview causes me as a researcher to consider the theoretical question, what in fact are women's studies' famous fragmentariness, mysteriousness and special character of emotion revealed in women's texts? We don't need any of Eeva Jokinen's (199*) women's language house-presuppositions here do we?
Aalto's story is a straight-forward career tale, the feeling of which can be sensed clearly in its opening: "I was born in Eastern Finland, lived there until I finished upper secondary school and from that point I have continued on with life in the capital district." If I pick one metaphor from that sentence to encompass the whole story, it would be continuing on with life. In Aalto's case directness means, for example, such features within the tale as writing off her childhood and youth (within her basic life story) by telling of progressing from elementary school to secondary school – where she makes some good observations from the perspective of the class – from upper secondary to study in a college and university, and from studies to working life. After describing her first couple of jobs and the duties she had, Sirkka Aalto goes on to the birth of her children and to the next phase: "To everyone's surprise, including my own, I decided to stay home and I really was serious about home life."
Aalto cared for her children at home for seven years and tells of thinking that, "there go all the dreams of a career." But they didn't go, because while being a house mother she "still took care of little projects the whole time," on the basis of which her position in the professional world was preserved ("a feeling came that I hadn't lost that world which was outside of the world of the home"). At that point Aalto also completed her education on the side and through one student organizational contact she was called back into working life (in the field of management), in which a more challenging positions followed one another in Finland and abroad – from representative to division manager, from there to being department manager of the international joint-venture section, and on to being the director of an international institute within the same field. Getting up to the level of institute director went like a single thread; besides which it was the first time that she had applied for a job in competition with over a hundred other applicants.
I had in a way surprisingly and with little fore-thought got rather far in my work, in that things always just fell into place, and I hadn't actually gone looking for any work; it was just offered to me.
There came a point in Aalto's career where she moved to a different country from her children because of her job. She put her children in an international school, which was easy since they had learned a foreign language (French) from their father. At the same time events lead in the direction of divorce from her husband, a union which can be described as a working partnership. Sirkka had done projects together with her husband, such as writing a book. The divorce seems to have been according to the "parting as friends" ideal ("we were in complete agreement"), in which the most important thing was/is agreeing on joint custody and maintaining a working relationship ("we've had exceptionally good contact the whole time"). Sirkka speaks relatively little in her basic life story about her husband and marriage; the husband is really only mentioned when Sirkka starts to describe the (trouble-free) divorce. The children also are easy cases, adjusting to transitions in their mother's career, gifted, independent, athletic, linguistically inclined and cosmopolitan young people. Sirkka Aalto took charge of the interview by sketching her life as a career and stressing how, with great effort, the department which she was running managed to get its budget into rather good shape.
Actually there are many curves sketched here. There are rather clear paths from the perspective of a personal life and the perspective of a woman's life and some sort of perspective of career development. At the moment I feel pretty good in the sense of looking at the department's operations and relations to the outside world where finances are incredibly tight. At the moment we're in really good shape.
The basic life story of an educated woman can thus be emphatically a
career tale, in which life and work are spliced together into a compact
whole. This is not a (stereotypical) masculine tale of heroism in the sense
that great obstacles and threats are confronted and then overcome by the
magnificent victor. The non-masculinity is perhaps seen in that the ego
puffing dimension of Sirkka Aalto's story is rather small. Things – a significant
career – have just happened somehow furtively, somewhat to the surprise
of the narrator herself, lightly. "I was always asked for and I was a bit
surprised. They were really great opportunities, but really hard work,
though worth it." Work is also the salt of life for Paavo Aho.
Paavo Aho is an educator, born in Pori in 1948 and living there
still, his parents' only child, with a tax clerk for a father and a hat
maker for a mother. Aho is the divorced father of one child, and since
completing his university education he has always been able to do pleasant
work, which has always included a creative, self-expressive element (performing,
writing, organizing). Aho's story can be summarized by saying that it brings
together the themes of new masculinity, perhaps within a more traditional
masculinity.
Newer masculinity (cf. Badinter 1993) refers to fatherhood-centeredness in a man's life. Aho's daughter, born in 1974, is the center of his life. Aho cooks and has taken care of housekeeping routines when his daughter was little. In his own words:
I was definitely much, much more with my kid than the normal father of a family gets to be because I could have four days off during a week, weekdays. That's certainly how we started to get so close. I've tried to steer her into those areas of life which I think are good, in other words enjoying culture, being a humanist, and darn it I've succeeded in this pressuring. She's studying languages and anthropology, which I think is a lot smarter than some technocratic world view. During her school time I gave my daughter every possibility to develop herself, sometimes too much, but I didn't want to chain her down in any way, not in the slightest. I drove her around a lot for sports and in general for anything at all that I saw as good. So in that way I tried to raise her. And I'm proud that after the divorce she chose me; when she's in Pori she stays at my place. Maybe that says that somehow I succeeded after all.
A more traditional masculinity is found in Aho's hobbies and occupation. He is a workaholic, fanatical woodsman and hunter ("I'm not a killer, but I enjoy nature"), and socializing with his buddies shows up in his stories in many ways ("I wouldn't sell out a pal for any price in the world"). The man seems to always be in motion, doing, making and organizing. In addition to everything else, Aho is an organizational activist (Lions Club), bibliophile and participant in many civic activities.
Aho's story has a dramatic impact. Difficulties haven't got him down; on the contrary, he has drawn strength from them ("trials teach you") and they have been the starting points for a new life. Divorce after 20 years of marriage of course meant failure, but it was "the wisest option, and since then life has once again been worth living." Aho's story is like a lesson from guides to positive thinking, which warn against stopping to ruminate the old; it is wiser to set sail for new seas without hesitation. Giddens's second chance horizons are also easy to recognize in his speech. Reorganization at his work place "started a new phase of life for me, it brought my life forward." Aging and a new relationship with a girlfriend considerably younger than himself are also a challenge which fifty-year-old Aho wants to take on regardless of the fear he has (notice especially the last sentence of the following quote).
I hope that even when I'm old I'll be able to move and get around, but I'm not worried about it; things have gone well in that regard. Even seeing buddies go from stand tall... I'm of the age group which many have been taken out of. You just have to block that out. I would think. Maybe fear is too strong a word, but when I've got a rather noticeably younger one of those so-called girlfriends these days, that I'm supposed to be able to do more with than just hold hands, and that can be a scary place. But that too gives like physical strength.
Paavo Aho has always dived into his work, because he has been able to do things that he really enjoys. He worked for the same employer from 1972 until 1994, at which point the company ran into financial difficulties, "and then they chucked out a half-dozen of the oldest, that is highest paid, and since I had the most seniority I was the first to go." Getting laid off "feels bad, really bad, for a while." Aho's interpretation of his getting through it is based entirely on the ethos of survival and his own abilities and characteristics. "I got over it real well, ‘cause a job can always be taken away from a creative person, but the work can't be, ‘cause all the time you've got it in this workshop between the ears." The creative person always has a workshop with him, between the ears. Aho started his own business – "I got to do work which was also my hobby." Nowadays he can't be anything other than satisfied, though his life "is rather meager in every sense but the personal." Work is one of Paavo Aho's "basic pillars of happiness"; it makes Aho happy to be able to do work that he enjoys "with every cell of my body." Two other elements of his happiness are friends and health, and we can conclude from other parts of the interview that his daughter and his girlfriend as well belong in this category.
Paavo Aho, a future optimist which survived corporate restructuring, expresses a rather unusual attitude. If we think of working life, Aho's story as well ties into the general connection of the major change in production structures in the Finland of the nineties, in which, among other things, efforts have been made to adapt applications of information technology to the demands of a globalized world economy. Capacities are taken apart, production and labor processes are analyzed, and as demands for professional skills among workers grow and all forms of uncertainty increase. As the pace gets faster, the working environment gets more tense, and managers, supervisors and workers get stressed and burned out (Julkunen & Nätti 1998, 257). Aho's optimism is unusual; more common it seems, for a large portion of the baby boomers would be to relate to their long and tiring working careers like the majority of the current 55-year-olds, which are already retired. A long and consuming working career using skills the demand for which is already history, with meager educational qualifications, is already a difficult basis for keeping and finding a job (Suikkanen et al 1998). If one's basic education is that from a Finnish grammar school of the fifties or sixties, it is difficult today, particularly for the long-term unemployed, to make a new start on that basis.
The main purpose of the next example is not to get into the problem of qualifications, but to give a picture for comparison – read: a non-academically educated woman – with Metsänen's and Aho's perspectives as educated men and perhaps especially to be compared with the perspective of the academically qualified woman (Aalto). The relationship between Paavo Aho's and Kari Metsänen's stories is obvious in that both have plowed obstacles and threats (unemployment) out of their paths so that they came out as winners.
Marja Viljanen was born in 1947 in Finland's Ostrobothnia region,
as the youngest of twelve children. Her father was a forestry supervisor
and her mother cared for the children and the livestock. At 50 years old
her mother's heath began to decline (weak heart function and blood pressure
problems). Marja applied for middle school and was accepted, but she dropped
out after being put on academic probation for her grades in language courses,
after which she transferred to the home economics department of a vocational
center. Upon graduating from this program with good marks, Marja Viljanen
would have liked to leave home and apply for continuing education in Helsinki,
"but mother couldn't stand to let go of me." Viljanen's story progresses
relationally (cf. Vilkko 1997); she talks especially much about the lives
of those close to her, often at the expense of her own personal role in
the narrative, at times nearly taking herself out of the picture entirely.
Hints of self-sacrifice also show up from time to time in her narrative
(in relation to her ill mother, in relation to her future husband, later
taken ill as well).
Marja Viljanen did not become one of her cohort's perpetual young people, but rather she went right to work after finishing her Lutheran confirmation classes at 15 years old. (In her case confirmation training was a clear and demarcating rite of passage into adulthood.) Her first job was as an home helper for a school teacher's family. According to Viljanen's tale, rural Ostrobothnian culture in the early sixties was clearly hierarchical. The young teacher ran the household where Marja toiled away as a pitifully low-paid helper.
I cared for the children, prepared the food, cleaned and did everything, lit the fire in the oven, washed the laundry. She was quite strict, always setting out a list for me in the morning of the day's tasks which I had to get done: defrost the refrigerator, bake buns, make pancakes, cream-pancakes, just so. She was really strict, like a second time through home-ec. school. I learned to be incredibly versatile. (...) And their second child was born the following Christmas, maternity leave in those days was only a couple of months, or was it that much, so the lady wasn't on maternity leave for long. Then I had the baby and the 2 1/2-year-old to look after, so it was a lot of responsibility for a sixteen-year-old girl. This lady never did dishes herself on weekends either, and when I came in on Monday mornings there were many tubs full of dirty dishes waiting for me. Sometimes it was sort of disgusting. They had a really big apartment, with so many rooms, and I had to change all of the sheets; there was a certain order in which absolutely everything had to be done. First the blanket, then the pillow on top of that, then finally came the bedspread. The windows had to be washed; wood had to be carried in from the wood shed to the box next to the stove.
Marja Viljanen carried out her tasks without complaint. "Sure, I managed," she confirms. A particular ethos is at issue here. She tells of having learned to work hard from her "energetic" mother, whom she speaks of in a respectful and almost worshipful tone. Regardless of her illness, as a farm wife, her mother was a continuously involved in one form of work or another, even though there was a daughter-in-law living in the house, from caring for the livestock, cooking and maintaining the household to sewing and knitting ("my mother in a way taught me to work as well, with her being so hard working and all"). In an agrarian context, the socialization of work functioned in a self-evident manner. In this case Marja Viljanen is certainly relating the experiences and feelings of many of the rural born baby boomers (77 % of this age group). Weeding the garden had to be done, even when you were tired of it; children too had their regular chores:
I always had the evening dishes to wash; no matter how huge the pile was, I had to wash them. First I had to heat up the water, since we didn't have hot running water in those days. Later I had to wash laundry. Laundry day was tough. It was easier in the summer though when the rinsing could be done outside, but in the winter when we had to go out and get the water from the well it was tough. There were clotheslines over the top of the snow drifts, and first the wet laundry hung out there till it froze; then it was taken to the shed and the loft to dry.
Marja met her future husband, from a neighboring farm, at a dance when she was 16 years old. "That's where my free youth got cut off, meeting him at the first dance and getting close the second time." At 17 Marja went to a year-long course at an agricultural institute and got good grades on her certificate. In her enthusiasm she applied for continuing education at the college in a neighboring city, where she was also accepted. Problems in acquiring housing and in her romantic life ended up blocking Marja's leaving for school, however, to her great disappointment. "It just somehow came down to not finding anyone to go in with me on getting the apartment." It was also difficult to live apart from her boyfriend, who was doing farm work in the area. She ended up returning home and helping her mother around the farm, especially in the barn.
Upon getting married, Marja Viljanen moved into her husband's childhood home as a daughter-in-law. "My mother-in-law made me terribly nervous as to whether she would accept me or not, but I got a hold of things and started to settle in as a house keeper there." At the time of the birth of their first child, her husband got work as an odd job man in Helsinki, but Marja stayed with her mother-in-law for quite a while still. This was followed by the move to Helsinki, to live with her husband as tenants in an upstairs apartment in a private home. Her husband worked and got a good salary, but he was away a lot because of work. Marja took care of their child at home. The young family's standard of living rose when they took a single room co-op apartment in a large building: "Our car had it's own cassette player and we were always buying new clothes and we would go to show off a bit back in the home town: our daughter was three and we had our own apartment and our own car, and we had got ahead in life." A second child was born. Her husband dived into his work even more to support the family and started to have heart problems. They passed. A piece of land was bought for building a summer place, on which "we built a little shack." The property and cottage were a financial burden for new residents in an apartment building. Money was tight and saving were necessary, so Marja started to work taking care of other children. The single room apartment was too small for a family of four: "I said to my husband that we can't stay in a single room for ever." So the family took out another mortgage and bought a bigger apartment. Her husband worked harder still, which involved health risks. With one child in school and the other four years old, Marja Viljanen, at 27 years old, got a job as a nurse's aide in a retirement home. This became a permanent position for her. Years later Marja got into the two-year home health care training program which she had long dreamed of, after which the city of Vantaa hired her for a position corresponding with her education.
A few years later illness began to set in. Marja developed a condition of the central nervous system, followed by cancer which was treated by radiation therapy and surgery. Marja continued working for ten years after her illness began, and finally retired in the mid-nineties. Her husband's health had also begun to decline; he was diagnosed as having asthma, and in the late eighties asbestos poisoning. First he was on a year's sick leave from work, exercised and improved his condition, but he still could not continue in his former profession. Marja's husband went into disability retirement, but he ended up in a dispute with the insurance company's doctors as to the work-relatedness of his illness. At last this was granted, and he received compensation accordingly, but only partially.
Marja Viljanen and her family were not crushed by these illnesses; they adjusted to them. "My husband got better medication, life went on, and I went on working. We bought a better car, he brought me to work and picked me up afterwards. Many years went by that way. He was home, vacuuming the house, doing the shopping, or we would do the shopping together." The cottage and fresh air in the countryside were literally life-savers, and their daughters and grandchildren became especially significant. Marja's family life was build around the cottage, which was refurbished, extended and improved on continuously, and around supporting her daughters as they became adults. The girls left home. One graduated from culinary school, got married and had two children; the other went to upper secondary school and left to study social work.
Marja Viljanen's story tells of difficulties, living with them, fighting against them in part, putting an effort into work, even slaving at it, and in the end getting by together with one's family regardless of difficulties and illnesses. This getting by is seen in terms of increasing material possessions (changing apartments, summer cottage expansions and trading cars), paying back the bank loans taken on several occasions and the success of their children (especially becoming grandparents). Marja's tale is not only the story of (hard) work, but of diligence and endurance, especially in the family context. The work ethic that she learned as a child from her mother, and the whole world view that goes with it, humble – but never humiliated – endurance of suffering has been kept alive. Her story is no forced lesson in positive thinking. Difficult illnesses have also signified the finitude of life and realization and recognition of the possibility of death even in the interview situation ("death is getting closer... I'm already in the grieving process").
Marja's husband died in the summer following this interview of complications of acute asbestos poisoning. If this is one tale of the Great Migration, then from the perspective of work it can be summarized as follows: A young couple moves to Helsinki after the husband's work and the husband later dies in middle age from work-acquired illnesses.
In the interview Marja Viljanen spoke somewhat laconically of (her)
illness. This doesn't initially strike me as avoidance. Perhaps this feature
is related to the ethos of survival which she expresses in her story. That
ethos seems to be a fact of the chain of generations. In Marja Viljanen's
life, compared to those of her mother and grandmother, there have been
major changes, especially in the external conditions of life, so that we
can speak here of a story of transition. But her ethos – in terms of what
the principles of life are considered and in what sense, as well as what
are the means, spirit and practice of realizing these principles, this
relating heavily to work – seems to be very much the same as that of her
mother and grandmother. Marja's grandmother had been left as a widow with
a big brood of children, on account of which her mother had to "learn young
how to do everything." And her mother could do everything as has been told.
(Marja has plenty of sewing patterns: "My mother could do just about anything,
all sorts of knitting, spinning yarn, gathering the wool and knitting socks,
sewing, even underwear.") Her grandmother was strict. Marja's mother wanted
to marry young to "get out from under the yoke" of her strict mother. The
grandmother's life wisdom which she passed on to her daughter as she left
home was a stern command: "If you're running off now at 16 after some guy
then don't come back to complain about your troubles." As Marja tells it,
her mother remembered this lesson and she never "went to ask from Granny."
The progress of the chain of generations through time is the interplay
of repetition and transition, which at times is nothing short of astounding.
Marja's strict grandmother was left a widow because her husband worked
as a miner and got his lungs full of the dust of the mines.
The life stories covered in this article reveal the fact that there
is no single story of the baby boomers. On the basis of these stories it
is easy to say that a certain strong work ethic, readiness to do hard labor
as well, is a common cultural ingredient for this cohort, but not all have
had a workshop between the ears. While Sirkka Aalto's and Paavo Aho's stories
serve as a display for the academically educated portion of this age-group,
Marja Viljanen's story and way of life are, by comparison, a path many
degrees harder and more difficult (or a display of such). Aho, Aalto and
Viljanen – cut from the first two to the third – portray the division of
this age-group, the key to which is education. And education means the
door to work.
The beginning of the education explosion, hit the baby boomers, but as Matti Virtanen (1998a, 214) says, contrary to common belief, baby boomers are on the average poorly educated. The educational decisions of childhood and youth divided the boomers. Those who moved south often acquired extensive educations and official positions(14); those which moved within smaller circles stayed in the countryside or small towns as basic laborers, workers and agricultural professionals, often with just an elementary or grammar school education. But there was work then, and pretty much anyone could get by and do rather well without any education in particular: two hands, simple practicality and a diligent, appropriately humble attitude were enough. One man who moved from the countryside to the city of Joensuu summarizes: "I'd say that all those of my age-group, though back then there wasn't any two-sided system of schooling success, have done so well in working life... The poorer the conditions, the further they got. That says that my age-group has well succeeded... I couldn't have imagined twenty years ago that people could have it so good" (Korhonen 1993).
Educational selections still divided the baby boomers though. The starting point of this division is almost without exception included in each of the life-stories in our research material, in an emphatic sort of way. In this decision a major charge was concealed. Titta Tuohinen's observation is valid for this material and context as well. She writes (1996, 71 & 73):
As more and more children got in, went or were sent to secondary school, at the same time it meant the gradual growth of a new class system among the common people, dividing them in two. We became the secondary school graduates and the grammar school graduates; those performing intellectual labor and those performing manual labor. [...] Society's new class distinctions not [...] only divided the common people in two; it also divided families. Familiar are the tales in which a permanent tension has arisen between siblings because, for instance, the elder of them were sacrificed on the altar of manual labor so that the younger at least would be able to get an education.
For one of the other women interviewed in our survey, not being able to complete secondary school was the great explanatory factor of her life: it was the most important basic motivation for operating her own small business; for starting, running and expanding a chain of cosmetics shops. Not only for this, but for everything which she found the time for: raising children in addition to running a business, training her business's own personnel, acquiring possessions, employing her own husband, acting as the leader of the professional organization in her field – in which she had representative functions both nationally and internationally – as well as being a dynamic training leader. Unfortunate experiences of childhood with regard to the parallel systems of education has been, in this case, the incentive to show her successfulness, "even without an education".
There is also the case of the agricultural entrepreneur (Juhani among the introductions), who in his story from time to time returns to the basic fact of his life that the passing from one generation to the next simply pointed to him. The old master had decided that his son would keep the farm at the time when the boy would have been studying for secondary school entrance examinations. The son hopped on board after finishing grammar school then. His childhood playmate from the neighboring farm is now a professor in the University of Helsinki, while the narrator himself has "remained in the same position." But the farm hasn't exactly been sitting like a bump on a log – its progress has been a success story unto itself: expansion, specialization, a parallel side-venture (in forestry machinery) and now most recently adapting to EU operating conditions. The farm he inherited from his father has gone through many changes in the structure of agriculture, with the key factor being brutally hard work, but with resourceful entrepreneuring also playing an important role. And when it comes to education, his own children have finished secondary school and have all gone on to colleges and universities.
I can't but wonder at the hierarchical nature of education which is
reflected in stories like these in nearly manic proportions. The paradigm
associated with educational hierarchies is that at the end of the educational
pipeline a profession is waiting which in some way according to its own
premises guarantees clearly better and socially more respectable work,
which in turn is the key to higher status in society (cf. education's "lord
lift" effect).
The Finns' workaholism brings to mind Matti Kortteinen's (1992)
interpretations of the ethos endurance and solitary survival. The ethos
of solitary survival is a cultural form which has been inherited from the
agrarian society into the interpretive framework of contemporary individualized
free market competition. For Kortteinen it is even a model which transcends
all borders, of profession, gender and generation (Tuohinen 1996, 66).
This sort of ethos of survival is a familiar feature of the speech of many
baby boomers, since they have one foot solidly planted in the agrarian
Finland. And agrarian Finland has been strongly the peasantry of meager
conditions, not by any means a landed aristocracy, even land ownership
coming to them rather late.
But what is this survival ethos? Titta Tuohinen (1996, 68-70) approaches it as individuality and comparison. Individuality has broken the old chain of command in reference to oneself; in other words it is a question of the human individual's freedom and independence in relation to others. Marja Viljanen told how her mother carefully avoided turning to her own stern mother for help. Paavo Aho, Kari Metsänen and Sirkka Aalto all seem in their individual careers to display the same odyssey of the lone mariner, albeit with noticeable differences in tone (especially in the lightness of Aalto's account). The other side of the coin of this independence is that we want to be free and individualized specifically within a community of like individuals, which accounts for the significance of the experience and feeling of comparison (Tuohinen 1996, 68). A sense of one's own value appears to be the central function of comparison, and its context is one's (own) group, clan, social environment. The powerful requirement to measure up to one's peers(15) explains the highly charged nature of school experiences – for this reason the baby boomers' division into grammar schoolers and secondary schoolers has stung so deeply. For the same reason work and employment have been for this cohort the measure of one's personal value and the means of redeeming one's own independent individuality. Besides this – since this cohort's industriousness has happened to coincide with a period of considerable increase in the Finnish GNP – together with consumer culture(16) a particular style of displaying independent individuality and/or success has developed. This is one basic reason for the baby boomers' preferred lifestyle of living in a private home – or other fully owned housing – owning a car and summer cottage, and traveling extensively. Of course those are valuable things for their owners to have unto themselves, but since they are acquired as the fruits of one's labors, they also have a communicative and social dimension to them. It wasn't in vain that Marja Viljanen told of swinging by the old home town on vacation from the city with a new car, husband and cutely dressed little daughter, "just to show the folks back home that we'd got ahead in life." The culture of consumption that broke out, paid for by workers' wages, of which the baby boomers happened to be the messengers, has also brought with it lightness, variety, body consciousness (health and age consciousness), experience seeking (the rich life: it's dull to stay stuck in one place and the same relationship all the time), new emotional structures (personal relationship boom) and world-citizenship. If this lightness (etc.) and the controlled hedonism associated with it (Lehtonen 1998) is directed towards the work ethos, the result is a considerable lightening of the latter – thus the (working) lives of Sirkka Aalto and Paavo Aho are hard to characterize simply as hard and difficult.
Individuality means taking the problems of the servant class, the landless
peasants and the industrial laborers as the background of the baby boomers'
life, by way of their parents and grandparents in particular. They are
the basic facts of the progression of generations, regardless of how much
emphasis there is on our rising out of them. Industriousness and workaholism
are part of the picture in that hard physical labor was for those older
generations the means of achieving and maintaining a landed status. I don't
know how, in closing this article, I ended up in the post-civil war landscape
of the twenties, with the liberation of the crofters, at which point a
vast number of independent small farms were born; and in the late forties,
when land allotments for returning combat veterans brought the number of
small farms to its peak. Having combat veterans as fathers is the strong
uniting factor among Finland's baby boomers which I started with though,
so it makes as good a conclusion as any.
(1) These introductory statements come from research material based
on 39 narrative thematic interviews (cf. Gubrium & Holstein 1997; Hyvärinen
1994) conducted by Jonna Jussila and myself in 1997 and 1998. These interviews
were part of the Baby Boomers Turn Fifty project (involving Tommi Hoikkala,
Pasi Falk & J. P. Roos). The central question of the interview
was: "Tell the basic story of your life." Those interviewed were born between
1945 and 1950, with two exceptions. The research process was carried out
according to the norms of qualitative incidental investigation (Hamel,
Dufour & Fortin 1993). The material gathered here is simply a specimen;
not a sample with statistical implications, but rather with reflexive,
conversational and generalizing implications in terms of their recognizability
(Hoikkala 1993).
(2) Throughout this article I have concealed the actual identities of the participants by changing their names, the place names and other means of identification. I have also somewhat condensed the conversations from the interviews.
(3) A cohort consists of those people which were born within a given time frame, in this case between 1945 and 1950.
(4) On the basis of Virtanen's mathematical key, these greatest baby boom years were followed by the moderately large cohorts of 1958-68 with an annual birth rate of approximately 80,000, after which it dropped off to approximately 60,000; the estimated number of births for 1999 being 57,000.
(5) According to Virtanen's definitions, those born in 1945 (95,000) cannot properly be included in the baby boom. In 1946 there were 106,000 births; in 1944, 79,000; in 1950, 98,000. I see no particularly clear grounds for dropping the ‘45s from this list then.
(6) Matti Virtanen's (1997, 3) suggestion for defining and analyzing common experience is to speak of joint participation in some process of change which "produces both similar and differing experiences." I myself would also refer to something seen as common and the recognizability of the process of change. All of the members of the cohort do not have to share in a given process, but the majority have to recognize it (take for example the migration from the countryside to the city, the presidency of Urho Kekkonen, the rise of youth culture or the radicalism of the sixties). The shared experience is held in common, and while the recognized experience too may be held in common, it may also be something which one has remained or been left outside of.
(7) Generational movements are movements in which the vocal minority of a given cohort commandeers the voice of its age group and starts to speak of itself and its demands as those of a generation.
(8) Matti Virtanen (1997, 3) condenses the common experiences of youth as follows: everyone has a youth, not just elite brats. I might add though: it is just longer for some than for others.
(9) In the early sixties Finland had four "Prayer Saturdays" each year, during which all amusement places (dance halls, cafés, restaurants, bars and movie theaters) were closed. At the mid point of the decade the high school students' political organization "Teiniliitto" started a protest against this amusement prohibition, after which this prohibition was soon repealed.
(10) Matti Virtanen (1997b, 3) has information that in 1980 four fifths of the upper level clerical workers and three quarters of the lower level workers of this type were "risers". Among the working class as well, less than half were born to the group, and only among agricultural workers was the majority originally from the same.
(11) Elisabeth Badinter (1995) places the revolution in fatherhood around this same period. Badinter is referring to the practice in which a man begins to consider his children and home as something significant for himself, so that he begins to carry functional responsibility for everyday aspects of home life: caring for the children, working around the house, in such a way that simply being a provider and working outside of the house is no longer seen by men (Tigerstedt 1994) and (especially) by women as a reasonable agreement and practice for the couple's relationship.
(12) This does not mean that family and children would have been emotionally distant and insignificant factors for fathers of the war generation, but it is rather a question of the division of labor between the genders as a matter of historical practice.
(13) This summary is part of my notes, which I make in the process of coming away from each interview. I call this procedure the close chapter technique or simply the close chapter (Hoikkala 1993).
(14) Virtanen refers to this group as the baby boomer generation's inner fraction of winners, yuppies and successes which have at least slipped into the educational pipeline and the (big) cities. It is descriptive of them today that in many way they hold the reins of power in society – ranging from Jorma Ollila (Chairman of the Nokia Corporation, b. 1950) to Erkki Liikanen (the finnish Commissar of EU, b. 1950) .
(15) The requirement of measuring up to one's peers has historically arisen among the rural peasantry, since the power structures denied this possibility. A large portion of the population had been held in dependent servanthood, living under the overall authority of their landlords. The rural peasantry of the Nordic region was also characterized by the fact that there were chains of command between the peasants themselves. Generally those who were able to give orders were those who owned land, which likewise has been the key to independent fully empowered citizenship (Tuohinen 1996, 69).
(16) Cf. Pasi Falk's (1994) concept of consumption as an all-encompassing
key phenomenon.
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Riitta Kyllönen
Mannheim University
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
68131 MANNHEIM
Germany
riitta.kyllonen@mzes.uni-mannheim.de
ttriky@uta.fi
Draft version. Please, do not quote or reproduce any parts of this paper
without
the author’s written permission.
Paper prepared for the 4th European Sociological Conference "Will Europe
Work?"
18th-21st August 1999, Amsterdam
Research Network ‘Biographical Perspectives on European Societies’
"It is necessary to emphasise vigorously that the process of
representation does not describe what already exists, but produces also
what it describes. Therefore, scientific research does not only refer to
natural objects already given, but it produces them while describing them.
... [A]n experiment produces two things at the same time: In the first
place, it establishes the relation and, second, its representation." Cooper
and Law (1995, 303)
1. DIFFERENCE IN DISTAL DESIGNS*
Sexual division of domestic labour is an issue that has gained great
attention in family sociology in the past couple of decades. Empirical
research conducted among conjugal families in many countries shows convincingly
that women still do the major part of housework even when they are increasingly
present in the labour market. There has been a growing interest in understanding
why men have not increased their contribution to domestic work correspondingly,
especially in dual-earner families. Yet few explanatory studies have been
carried out.
The vast majority of the work on gender relations in the family has
been conducted in frameworks termed distal (see Cooper and Law 1995). Distal
thinking privileges results, products, consequences and ‘finished’ objects
of thought and action. Distal thinking is pre-concept thinking. It sees
phenomena to be studied as already constituted, known and simplified –
just waiting to be analysed and described. A distal agendas take for granted
the nature of what they attempt to study. Concepts are used in an uncritical
and unproblematic way – so that they appear as conclusions that hide the
proper origins. ‘State of rest’ is perceived as a normal condition and
change as something accidental. Distal approach is more concerned with
results rather than the processes that generate them. It highlights boundaries
and divisions, order, clarity and hierarchy. The distal world is a finished
and explicit totality where the relations are reciprocally determined.
In much empirical work on the gender division of work at home, distal
thought is manifest in cross-sectional designs that produce snapshot knowledge
of one moment. The issue has been studied mainly as a measurable question,
as a matter of time use. It has been investigated either in absolute terms
(time spent by both spouses in domestic tasks), or in relative terms (men’s
share of the total time spent in housework). Time use studies have measured
how gender combines with a number of other differences: how time employed
by men and women in domestic and paid work varies with age, number of children,
employment condition, geographical area or place of residence (for Italy,
see Bimbi 1995). Some information is provided on change in total hours
worked at home by men and women in different occupational groups (Belloni
1995) and employment statuses (Gershuny and Sullivan 1998). As time-budget
studies focus on one or two variables/dimensions at the same time, the
knowledge of intra-sexual differences is available only on a very aggregate
level. Moreover, studies use individuals as a unit of analysis, and are
thus not able to account for possible variations between different kinds
of households.
Subsequently more qualitative studies (and work combining quantitative
and qualitative methods) in the field of family sociology have also been
done. This research shows that beyond the matter of time use, division
of domestic labour has qualitative aspects, too, such as its overall nature
and the degree of gendering of specific household tasks (for example Saraceno
1980; Bimbi and Castellano 1993; Gregson and Lowe 1993).
Quantitative housework analysis, in particular, has been marked by
pre-fixed meanings attached to family work by scholars since the early
studies. The explicit or implicit idea underpinning much theorising and
explanation has been that domestic work is an unpleasant, poorly rewarding
job and done out of mere necessity. Moreover, the processes that result
in women doing most family work have often been taken as given. Universal
mechanisms have been claimed to account for women’s inequality, oppression,
subordination and exploitation: the unequal division has been viewed as
imposed by individual husbands, who may even control their wives’ level
of performance (Delphy and Leonard 1992), or by the patriarchal system.
As far as men participate, they have been seen as picking the best and
most interesting tasks, leaving the most routine and repetitive chores
to their partners (Saraceno 1980; see McRae 1986).
Such metanarratives of oppression have been increasingly criticised
for conceiving of women as a unitary group. They are criticised for being
too abstract and failing to account for change and difference in contemporary
gender relations. Moreover, they see women as passive victims, and fail
to describe their individual agency, the ways in which women themselves
contribute to and contrast the production of gender relations (Pollert
1996; Elshtein; Hakim 1991) To remedy these shortcomings, frameworks that
emphasise situated interaction of actors and allow for conceptualising
difference and change (for example, Hakim 1991; Benjamin and Sullivan 1993)
have been proposed. This need is particularly pressing when studying gender
relations and attitudes of contemporary young generations, as cohort is
a powerful element of differentiation of gender relations (Saraceno 1991;
Pilcher 1998). Moreover, as contemporary couples operate in more than one
ideological environment, difference and change need to be examined in different
kinds of households (Benjamin and Sullivan 1996).
Recent qualitative and quantitative work has, indeed, started questioning
the universalising explanations of gender relations in contemporary families.
Some qualitative studies centring on experience have focused on analysing
the meanings and signification of domestic labour directly (Fassinger 1993),
and also men have been brought into the focus of family studies.
Work on wo/men’s subjective accounts of motives has, indeed, provided
some alternative reasons for the gender division of family labour (McRae
1986; Bimbi and Castellano 1993). Some recent surveys, too, address experience
of time in terms of perceived ‘fairness’ of the division of household labour,
while time-use studies examine ‘enjoyment’ of specific domestic activities
(Sullivan 1996; Gershuny and Sullivan 1998). Some attempts to explain the
‘paradox’ or ‘surprise’ finding that quite a few women appear satisfied
with asymmetrical domestic arrangements have also been made (see for example,
McRae 1986; Baxter and Western 1998).
‘Class effects’?
Even though class has traditionally been included in the litany of
differences to be accounted for in feminist theorising, in the 1980s and
in the first half of the 1990s, class was practically absent from empirical
analysis (Pahl 1984; Pollert 1996; Skeggs 1997; Reay 1998), also in family
studies. A lot of qualitative research, in particular, was mainly based
on the category of gender, even though much work focused only on women.
Much less attention has been paid to whether/how the division of domestic
labour varies by class.
In contrast to some first-generation work on apportionment of work
in the family (Saraceno 1980) that typically assigned the family status
according to the husband’s socio-economic position even when the wife was
in the labour market, recent work has focused on the interplay between
class and gender by using the family as a unit of analysis. Family class
location is thus assigned according to both spouses’ positions in the occupational
structure. This has allowed analysis of different kinds of households:
non-traditional and traditional cross-class families (McRae 1986; Barbagli
1988; Leiulfsrud 1991; Trifiletti 1994), and also different homogeneous
family class locations (Wright et al. 1992 and 1997; Gregson and Lowe 1993).
‘Malestream’ research on class structure, informal labour, economy, state
and civil society has become increasingly interested in women and the family.
This has made the family a kind of a melting pot where the traditionally
separate feminist and male strands of research cross, giving birth to new
research agendas which focus on both gender and class.
Studies thus far tell somewhat controversial stories about the relationship
between family class and gender in the domestic division of labour. This
is certainly due to different research designs and different ways of measurement.
Different tasks have been focused on (traditional fe/male tasks, child
care included or excluded), and different kinds of households with regard
to the presence of children, employment condition of spouses, etc. have
been included. Moreover, studies often include a mix of individuals belonging
to different cohorts and ethnic origins, and have been conducted in countries
with differing institutional arrangements. Work on division of work in
the home is cross-sectional.
The basic distinction is made between a structural approach and a processual
approach to social class. The structural approach deals with class as a
‘matrix or relationally defined empty places filled by individuals’. It
distinguishes between positions and people who are seen as moving between
locations. The positions are defined independently of individuals’ movements
in them. (Wright 1997, 492) Work using a structural approach takes a class
scheme as given. The main explanatory power of class stems from ‘the way
it determines the objective conditions facing different actors’, their
material interests as well as the various resources actors can collectively
organise in searching their material interests. (ibid., 493)
From this follows that the structural approach conceives of the possible
links between ‘class location’ and gender relations at home as unidirectional
and causal in nature, stemming from an individual’s position in the market
place (‘class effects’). It does not provide explanations of the logic
and mechanisms through which a possible association might be produced.
As each class scheme is based on certain criteria (skill, authority, property,
etc.), adopting a certain scheme for assigning individuals to classes carries
implicitly the assumption that the criteria (or some dimension closely
associated to them) generate the link between the position in the division
of labour in the market and that in the family. How this might occur remains
unclear.
The processual approach to social class provides alternative ways of
examining the eventual links and their constitution from the subjective
perspective of. It sees classes existing "only insofar as the biographies
of individuals are organized in such a way that they share a set of experiences
over time which define their lives in class terms". (Wright 1997, 492-493).
The processual perspective to class is defined by E.P. Thompson (1968,
9 – cit. in Wright, ibid.): "Class happens when some [wo/]men, as a result
of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity
of their interests as between themselves and as against those whose interests
are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs." In this view, individuals’
positions within production may provide "one of the mechanisms that generate
such a trajectory of experiences, but they are not intrinsically more important
than forms of community, family structure or culture in constituting individual
biographies in class terms". (Wright, ibid.)
2. PROXIMAL APPROACH
‘Proximal’ thinking (Cooper and Law 1995, 286-7; 297) differs from
distal thinking, but is a complementary way of perceiving the world. In
the proximal view, human and organisational states are not taken for granted,
but understood as products and effects of complex social processes. Proximal
thinking emphasises complicity and implication, symmetry and ambiguities.
The proximal world is continuous and incomplete, precarious and partial:
an open and undefined multiplicity within which the relations are reciprocally
implicated. Proximal theory is concerned with details, relations, particulars,
interaction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. The relations and objects do
not exist as such but are seen as results of complex and continuous processes
of organisation. The proximal agenda is interested in these processes,
and in forces and actors that produce relatively stable effects.
A framework will be briefly presented for an exploratory case study,
that attempts to examine three main questions as interrelated from the
subjective perspective of working parents: 1) How do wo/men with different
educational and occupational trajectories produce their life courses between
paid employment and family?; 2) how do two partners with similar or different
trajectories constitute a common family life course?; and 3) how do they
negotiate the gender division of domestic labour across the family life
course?
Biographical interviews were conducted, focusing on meanings, motives
and power relations as an integral part of spouses’ retrospective reconstructions
of all three points, and attention is paid to the intersections and calendars
of family and employment careers in wo/men’s life courses. Meanings attributed
to the individual spheres of life-totality (family, employment, space/time
of one’s own) are examined in relation to the whole life-totality (composed
of the family, paid work and time/space of one’s own) (Strandell 1984).
The unit of analysis is the family (the couple), and spouses are examined
in their ‘situated interaction’, in which interactional and institutional
dimensions of gender are played out (Benjamin and Sullivan 1993). Difference
is examined as an ‘ongoing interactional accomplishment’ (West and Fenstermaker
1995). The aim is to grasp the different mechanisms and processes in which
spouses negotiate diverse family organisations departing from their individual
objectives and values, and the opportunities and constrictions they face.
Ten dual-earner couples living in the Italian city of Modena were interviewed.
Both partners work full-time, or did so at least initially. Full-time employment
has traditionally been typical of both Italian men and women. The couples
represent different educational and occupational trajectories and have
minor children living at home. The region of Emilia-Romagna is in many
ways unique with regard to gender relations (gender contract). In the Italian
context, characterised by vast territorial differences in socio-economic
and politico-cultural development (Bagnasco 1977; Mingione 1990), the ‘Emilian
model’ emerges as a combination of higher female participation and a developed
model of a local welfare state. While Italy has low female labour force
participation rates on the national level, in the central urban axis of
the Emilia-Romagna region, 77% of women in the labour force were employed
in the official labour market in 1991 (Regione Emilia-Romagna 1992, 26-27).
The national welfare provisions (paid maternity and parental leaves) and,
in particular, the local welfare state (public child care services) have
contributed to defining this new model of gender relations by enabling
women to continue working in the labour market even when they get married
and have (a) child(ren). The labour market, in turn, offers jobs to women
in welfare and other services.
The research focuses on the relatively young cohorts: 19 out of 20
spouses interviewed were born in the 1950s and 1960s. The eldest women
interviewed were the first ones to adhere to the continuity model in the
labour market (Zanuso 1987, 55; Saraceno 1991), but for the younger ones
the continuity model of the ‘double presence’ is already a normal life
strategy. Therefore, these relatively young couples, where women are economically
independent, represent an appropriate group for examining change and difference
in gender relations at home. The cohorts studied still belong to those
who found permanent employment in the market, even though the 1992-3 crisis
(Reyneri 1995) had also hit some of the spouses examined.
3. INSIGHTS TO DIFFERENCE IN PROXIMAL APPROACH
The stories we tell about the linkages between gender and class in
the division of labour in the family are shaped by the paradigms that guide
our inquiries. Paradigms direct our attention away from certain phenomena
and toward others. (cf. Barnett 1997) What kinds of insights does the shift
to a biographical study in the framework delineated above give about family
patterns and difference in the gender division of work in the home?
1. Constructing life courses between paid work and family
Biographical analysis of how the spouses constitute and interpret their
life course (Gubrium et al. 1994) between paid work and family, makes it
possible to examine empirically the different ways in which family acts
as a site where the positions of individual family members in the labour
market, including the prospects of social mobility (Thompson 1997), are
negotiated. Thus the family is not only a place where family organisation
and gender relations are produced, but also a unit of social class and
stratification (Delphy and Leonard 1986; Bertaux and Thompson 1997).
A distinction is made between the two main family constellations within
which spouses have lived and how they are linked in the structure of institutional
opportunities to produce the individual biographies between family and
paid work: 1) the family of origin, on the one hand, and 2) the family
wo/men found by themselves, on the other. With regard to the family of
origin (and thus before planning a union with the future partner) the question
is asked, how do wo/men living in families with different resources (cultural,
social and economic capital) and cultures reproduce in their own biographies
the social position of the family where they grew up, or move upwards (or
downwards) in the occupational hierarchy. When subsequently planning
their own family, both partners have already made crucial choices concerning
their educational and occupational careers. They can, however, reconsider
the choices made so far to some extent: whether to maintain their occupational
position, to move ahead in the occupational hierarchy while already in
the union, or to renounce career ambitions for a so-called ‘marriage career’.
Different gendered (class) career paths before and after union can be discerned
among the wo/men’s interviews at an individual level (even though they
are bargained within the couple relationship): a ‘mommy track’ and a ‘career
track’ for women; a ‘daddy track’ and two different pathways to a ‘career
track’ for men, based on differences in cultural capital. As Bertaux and
Thompson (1997, 9) say, there are different reasons for individual mobility
(and non-mobility), but also different routes for occupational mobility,
with regard to the position and conditions of departure. The main career
paths discerned differ for both of the following dimensions: 1) the ways
wo/men establish calendars and intersections between different careers
(family, education and work) over their life course; and 2) the meanings
they assign to the spheres of family and work.
The various definitions (variants) of individual life-totalities that
emerge from the analysis at any given moment are marked by different weights,
volumes and relations (cf. Bourdieu 1995) of the spheres that make the
whole. Analysing the continuities and ruptures in the ways wo/men constitute
their life-totalities over their life course (intersections and timing
of different careers) allows us to understand how they establish work and
home orientation (or a balance between them) in a process that may go in
two directions: on the one hand, job characteristics shape the place that
family occupies in an individual’s life-totality, shaping also the ideal
timing of the reproductive career; on the other hand, ideal and effective
timing of family calendars shapes the position an individual establishes
in the labour market. The two-way linkages appear clearly in the women’s
biographies, but are present also in many men’s trajectories, though in
different ways.
Changes in family and work careers may occur for both endogenous and
exogenous reasons, be either deliberately chosen or occur unexpectedly,
like the arrival of an unplanned baby or reorganising work of the enterprise.
In all these cases individuals re-elaborate meanings that they assign to
the single spheres of their life-totality, re-negotiating the orientation
between family and work and time/space for oneself.
Cases show that individuals tend to be work-orientated (in contrast
to family orientated) insofar as they can find personal fulfilment in their
jobs, in other words, to the extent they can establish their job as their
major life project. If this is not possible, wo/men detach themselves from
work and orientate themselves more towards family, seeking self-realisation
within it or in personal interests. (Kyllönen 1999)
2. Organising family – Insights to difference
From the start of the union, both partners’ life courses are bargained
within the couple relationship into a common family and reproductive career
that may accommodate the spouses’ interests and claims differently and
to a varying (gendered) extent. The different divisions of labour in the
home (more or less symmetrical or asymmetrical) emerging from the analysis
result from diverse combinations of male and female class trajectories
(see above, ‘tracks’). The aim of the empirical analysis is not to make
general statements about a larger population, but to identify and describe
how the different gendered individual biographies and dispositions of two
spouses are negotiated in diverse family configurations across the life
course. The focus is on the paths and on the logic that could explain the
observed variety in the gender division of family labour.
Which kinds of empirical and conceptual insights does the analysis
of couples’ case histories give on the issue of difference in the division
of family labour?
Meanings in flux
The categories ‘family’, ‘work’ and ‘domestic labour’ have no fixed
meanings, rather spouses embedded in different situations with divergent
biographies assign a variety of meanings to them (cf. Harding 1986). Individuals
with different trajectories in social space organise their life-totalities
differently, assigning divergent meanings to the life spheres and family
roles. When narrating their families and gender division of labour within
it, they talk about qualitatively dissimilar things. Analysis of meanings
and power relations between spouses who have similar or different family
orientations and dispositions toward domestic work shows that the question
of the division of family labour is not simply a quantitative issue, nor
a question of the degree of gendering of specific tasks. Significant differences
between the couples can be discerned by the dynamics through which they
bargain the division across the family life course. Differences in outcomes
can be better accounted for if we study them in relation to the diverse
processes within which they are negotiated. (Kyllönen, ibid.) Examining
family organisation as a verb, through the processes in which it is established
(not as a noun), an attempt is made to explain the whys of the different
ways to share labour in the families examined.
Family life styles – defining standards
As domestic work acquires different meanings in different individuals,
housework does not appear as a fixed set of tasks across families, but
the total range of chores and the amount of household labour varies (cf.
Benjamin and Sullivan 1996). Diverse family cultures are established among
couples with distinct biographies and orientations between waged work and
family. Needs, priorities and relations (Saraceno 1989) and standards of
housework Pahl 1984) are defined in different ways, as are the meanings
assigned to housework, as seen above. Different family life styles can
be discerned.
Female determination in family organisation
In the analysis of biographical interviews, family organisation and
the constitution of both spouses’ trajectories in the labour market come
into view as two inherently interdependent dimensions of one single process.
Women’s biographies and orientation between waged work and family appear
as more determinant of different family and reproduction calendars when
pregnancy is planned. (Kyllönen 1996) Among the couples examined,
women’s different biographical orientations between work and family and
disposition to housework (rather than those of men) appear as more constituent
for the processes through which family work is shared between the spouses,
and for the degree of the symmetry established in the division, too.
Class, gender and other axes of differentiation
In Bourdieu’s (1983; 1990; 1995) thinking social space is a fundamental
principle of differentiation, and habitus its propelling power. What can
be said about ‘difference’ in the division of domestic labour and social
space on the basis of the cases studied?
The apparent impression obtained is that individuals’ work or home
orientation tends to be associated to work conditions (and thus, to certain
positions in the labour market). Working class (unskilled) men and women
examined who had stable positions, construct their life-totality as home
orientated, but this happens in gendered ways. As their jobs are not able
to serve as their major life project,. they establish family as the domain
around which they build their identity and from which they get fulfilment.
Both parenthood and material domestic management appear central to their
definition of family. By contrast, career men and women examined build
their life-totalities as more work orientated or balanced between home
and work. Consequently, family acquires a different meaning in their life-totality:
the emphasis is on the emotional spousal and parental relationships. Both
spouses consider domestic labour as a necessity, not important for the
meaning they assign to the family. (Kyllönen 1999)
Studies on cross-class families demonstrate that the use the conjugal
family as the unit of analysis makes the class structure appear more fluid
and less polarised. In many non-traditional cross-class families gender
relations tend to be more symmetrical (McRae 1986, Leiulfsrud 1991), while
in traditional cross-class families asymmetrical patterns prevail. The
increasing number of cross-class families is supposed to make the class
society more familiar and ambiguous. The space of family organisations
gets more varied and multifaceted, and cross-class families often bear
characteristics of two cultures. (Leiulfsrud, ibid.) The cases examined
are basically in line with these observations. The non-traditional couples
falling in the midst of homogeneous middle-class families and homogeneous
working-class families, combine characteristics of both surrounding configurations.
Yet, the cross-sectional picture of family organisations does not follow
any perfect family class pattern.
When exploring the different couples’ dynamics, the time-space of family
configurations appears even more fluid and the complexity increases. Seen
from the life course perspective, the boundaries between different family
organisations are increasingly blurred. Some couples seem to fluctuate
along a continuum between configurations with more asymmetrical and more
symmetrical gender relations over time. Their gender relations may assume
characteristics of another model, coming closer to it or converging with
it at a certain point in time. Such changes in family organisation are
often associated with job (class) mobility or changes in working conditions.
But an individual’s movement in social space does not always have an impact
on gender relations in the family. (Kyllönen 1999)
Thus, the connection between job mobility and gender relations is neither
linear nor mechanistic. Empirical analysis of the ways by which individuals
with different trajectories in social space establish the connections between
working conditions, home/work orientation and disposition to housework
helps to explain why we cannot expect to have any clear-cut patterns of
gender relations across family classes among the young cohorts examined.
On the other hand, it shows that individuals who move across social space
(job and class mobility) do re-define their work/family orientation and/or
disposition to housework as a result of changed experience of their working
conditions. This happens in a plurality of ways and not necessarily in
reference to the individual’s current position. The gendered ways in which
the disposition to domestic work is elaborated can be better understood
if examined as embedded in one’s entire life trajectory, both past experiences
and future aspirations and plans (cf. Brown 1982; Bourdieu 1990; Wright
1997). Moreover, changed dispositions of one spouse have to be accommodated
within the dispositions of the partner in a couple relationship, where
other factors, such as both partners’ working schedules, may either facilitate
the change or make it less probable. Empirical analysis of couples’ case
histories helps us to grasp the complex ways in which different couples
negotiate their gender relations in such unstable frames of reference.
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Wright, E. O. (1997) Class counts. Comparative studies in class analysis,
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Wright, E. O. (1997) Temporality, class structure and class consciousness,
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Paper given to the ESA Conference in Amsterdam, 1999.
E. Stina Lyon, South Bank University, London.
For several generations of European women this century Alva Myrdal has stood out as an icon in the progress of women towards greater equality with men in all spheres of public life. Through her writings and in her distinguished international career as social scientist, educator, politician, social reformer, ambassador and disarmament negotiator, she became an important contributor to developing conceptions of ‘modern’ womanhood. During the 1930s and 40s, in partnership with her economist husband Gunnar, she drew up blue prints for a family and woman friendly welfare state which became, and remain, influential well beyond Sweden itself (See Eyerman, 1985, Olsson, S.E., 1990). Amongst sociologists, she is probably best known outside Sweden for her book Nation and Family, published in the US during the Second World War (1941), and the later work on Women’s Two Roles, written with Viola Klein and published during the 1950’s (1968, first published 1956). The latter has often been seen as one of the books that put feminism back on the political agenda for women of the post-war generation. Her marriage and intellectual partnership with Gunnar lasted and stayed close for over sixty years, despite the fact that relations often had to be maintained by letter and across continents. They both received a Nobel prize, the only couple to do so for contributions in separate fields, Gunnar for economics and Alva for her contribution to peace and European disarmament. She brought up three children, with little help from her equally politically active and intellectually productive husband, and despite self-imposed work demands she unsuccessfully tried to have more. In her domestic life style, she was a ‘modernist’ innovator and trend-setter in many areas, ranging from child rearing and toy making to architecture and interior design. She raised the aspirations of many of her contemporaries about what modern and emancipated women should and could achieve both at work and in the home (See Bok, 1987 and Jackson, 1990 for chronological accounts of Alva’s life.)
But behind what looks like an ideologically coherent façade of successful public performance and effective personal practice, lay a private life steeped in the contradictions and conflicts of ‘modernity’ itself . Alva’s writings, as well as her own life, was shaped by tensions in the notion of progressive modernity between on the one hand the search for order, rationality and collective control in social life, and on the other the growing demands for equal human rights and the freedom from domination (See Nilsson, 1994, Wagner, 1994). With the hindsight of history, her contributions to public life have over the last decades become the subject of a great deal of retrospective critical evaluation, intellectually by social theorists in search for the complex origins ‘modernity’, as well as personally in various biographical writings by her own children and others (See Nilsson, 1994, Hirdman, 1995, Myrdal, J., 1982, 1984, 1994, Bok, 1987, Folster, 1992). These biographical evaluations have in different ways tried to address the relationship in her own life between high personal professional and intellectual ambitions and the domestic performance as wife and mother, and with this the perceived gap between the rational and ordered control of social life she preached for others and what she herself was able to achieve underneath a public front of fame and success. In much of this, the ‘dual role’ of women has for Alva in retrospect come to mean ‘dual exposure’.
This paper offers a discussion of the various ‘constructions’ of Alva
presented in some of the biographically relevant material written by members
of the Myrdal family itself. Neither Alva nor her husband wrote autobiographies,
their time was too occupied with the problems of ‘the world’ and the immediate
political tasks at hand. Their writings were however often steeped
in reflections based on personal experiences of a shared life trajectory
that took them from relatively humble and traditional rural circumstances
to academic elite status and world fame. Uniquely, all of their children
have written autobiographical memoirs of life in the Myrdal family, each
from their own perspective and in intellectual and emotional exchange with
each other and their parents. This paper will focus on these
different pictures of Alva as a case study of the complex issues inherent
in the use of biographical writing as a tool for understanding the experiences
and social conditions of women. From within a feminist perspective,
the paper will attempt to show the extent to which judgements of the public
contribution of women continue to be framed by socially and intellectually
shifting conceptions of their role in the public domain. As Alva herself
made a major sociological contribution to the conception of working women’s
lives as a complex ‘duality’ of roles, a selection of her own published
thoughts will form part of the framework for the discussion. As statements
of ‘lived experience’ each of these ‘stories’ about Alva is equally valid,
yet each is placed within a selective and partial context of moral and
intellectual assumptions about what a woman’s role should be as wife, mother,
role model and responsible adult. The many ‘faces’ of Alva presented
in these family accounts point to the difficulties inherent in trying to
understand ‘a life’ through the use of biographical material and to the
need for theoretical awareness of the origin and location of such writings
in different intellectual, political, temporal and personal space.
Biographical material has always been seen as an important resource for sociologists in search of the relationship between the ‘stories’ of lived experience and the patterns of structural social change. It is the material through which ‘the social’, as constructed by theoretically formal categories of collective life, is given human meaning and through which notions of individual subjectivity and action are kept at the heart of sociological understandings. It can illustrate the general with the particular by making more vivid the relationship between individual praxis and structural historical change with its accompanying social and cultural transformations (See Bertaux, 1981, Merton, 1988). Whether presented by a ‘self’ or by ‘others’, as Erben notes, individual biography can do this from different ends of status and power hierarchies ‘in its intriguing spiralling journey between the unique experience of the individual and the general experience of groups’ (1993: 23). In feminist sociology, biographical methods of inquiry have come to be seen as especially important in attempts to lay bare the day to day ‘problematics’ of the ‘hidden’ domestic lives of women and their lived experiences in public domains controlled by agendas not of their own making. But the use of biographical stories as evidence of private lives and experiences has also been seen to raise serious methodological dilemmas. Given that the verbal process of encapsulating a ‘life’, or a set of experiences within someone’s life, is inherently both selective and interpretative, how a ‘life’ is written about, and who does the writing, has in itself become an important subject matter for sociological inquiry. As Stanley argues, there are epistemological grounds for a sociological interest in the use of biographical material in that such ‘evidence’ needs, at least partly, to be understood as a social product of the shifting contexts of textual production itself (1993). This has raised particular issues for the use and interpretation of biographical material about women, representations of whom are often framed within a discourse designed to explain the experiences of men both in sociology and other intellectual domains.
Biographical accounts are socially contexted in a variety of ways with respect to both time and social space. First, as Nowotny reminds us, time is a sociological as well as a chronological entity creating tensions between ‘internal’ experienced time and ‘external’, given time. Social time runs through a life and perceived ‘time scales range from mythical time of the “once upon a time” to the immediately perceptible present’ (1994: 17). ‘As it was’ may be reflected in an isolated moment or in more exhaustive biographical retrospective descriptions. It matters when in a life such reflections are made. Individuals, as biographical subjects as well as writers, go through the ‘life cycle’ of ageing and the learning processes that go with it, as well as the material and status change that accompanies economic cycles and shifting opportunities for upwards or downwards social mobility. The temptation to be ‘chronocentric’ in the interpretations and evaluations of past actions and reasoning is as strong for readers of biography as for its writers. Secondly, though much biography is about individuals, life experiences take place in group contexts. The biographical ‘stories’ of collective social mobility presented in the works of Bertaux and Thompson show the importance of the family context in defining the nature and interpretation of tales about ‘the self’ (1997). Thirdly, the significance of gender perspectives in biographical writings and their interpretations has been well documented. Feminist sociologists has persistently emphasised that all knowledge and ideas needs to be re-evaluated as the products of persisting and powerful patriarchal structures that continue to undervalue the contributions of women both in the private and the public sphere (See Smith, 1987, Stanley, 1992,1993).
As ‘texts’, biographical material is located within changing intellectual space more or less explicitly articulated in terms of concepts and theories about what makes for acceptable and believable human motives and actions. As Stanley argues, in biographical stories the act of writing presupposes an ‘audience’, where the ‘self-who-was’ is an object of attempted reconstruction by the ‘self-who-writes’ for the purposes of making a case (1993: 48). Biographical narratives may also, as Kohli notes, display different structures and functions in for example the degree of reference to chronological descriptions of past events or the degree of evaluations offered about the meaning of events, now or at the time of happening, to the writing subject (1981). In a story where the self is at the centre of the experiences described, the interpretations of ‘others’ are also directed to an audience, albeit en passant, be this to sociologists, politicians, or the public at large. Such ‘directive’ purposes may not always be explicit, or indeed capable of being made explicit. Theoretical dichotomies such as ‘the personal’ and ‘the political’, the ‘private’ and ‘the public’, are in themselves intellectual conventions in terms of which the gendered relationship between social structure and social agency have come to been characterised in sociology. Yet, such conventions are also socially constructed relative to time and place and subject to periodic reflexive re-conceptualisation (See Morris and Lyon, 1996). In her own writings on women and work, Alva herself contributed to this conceptualisation in her explications of the ‘dual’ role of modern women. In the segmentation of life into separate spheres, and in giving more space in writing about women to the ‘personal’, ‘intimate’ and ‘domestic’, there is also, as Alva herself noted, an implied invitation to evaluate and judge the performance of women on a different and wider set of criteria than those applied to men. Finally, we need to add to this list of interpretational contexts also the notion of literary ‘genres’, what Evans terms ‘the codes and subjects’ of biography itself (1993: 42). These have changed over recent decades towards increasing explicitness about intimate personal details. As Evans argues, when a public figure was a public figure, and regarded as only that, the proper form of assessment was the public actions of that person. Now, when readers know more ‘they are faced with complex issues about assessing public works in terms not just of the agreed evaluative criteria (a ‘good’ book, a ‘fine’ painting and so on) but also in terms of the relationship of that work to the subject’ (1993: 8). The complexities of the relationship between lived praxis and self-professed aims and aspirations are increasingly laid bare for all to see with ethical implications for both writers using biographical or autobiographical materials, and for those put in the public domain by being written about (Harrison and Lyon, 1933). Such ethical issues are not to be taken lightly, given the power of public statements about private lives to destroy reputations and ruin lives, and need themselves to be understood in the context of prevailing gender moralities.
Biographical material can thus be seen to be sociologically read in
different ways, as a ‘resource’ of evidence to tell us something about
a ‘life out there’ and how it progressed, or as a topic of
investigation in its own right, as interpreted ‘versions’ of events understood
from particular stand points at particular times, in Stanley’s words as
‘parallel’ rather than ‘replacement’ accounts of situations described (1993:42).
In what follows, there is no attempt to search for a ‘true’ version of
events in Alva’s family life. In the second mode of using biographical
material, as socially located interpretations, there is no place for ‘adjudication’
between different versions of events, and none will here be attempted.
It is the viewpoint that counts here and the framework within which it
is constructed, not its validity or truth. We may be pulled in different
directions by the different biographical constructions of Alva with little
hope of coming to a definitive conclusion about who she was and what she
did. As Stanley writes, we may be ‘textually persuaded, cajoled,
led and misled’ by the personal narratives discussed above. But in
reading about her ‘we can, and we do, also scrutinise and analyse, puzzle
and ponder, resist and reject’ (1992: 131). 1)
In her sociological writings on the position of women in modern
society, Alva herself over a period of time grappled at great length with
the complexities of the relationship between the public and the private
domain. In so doing, she placed herself in the position of expert
and advisor on domestic problems shared by many others and thereby made
her own home life a subject for debate amongst admirers and critics alike.
The main theme at the core of these writing is that of the significance,
and ultimate inevitability, of paid work as the key to women’s emancipation.
But the perspective on the consequences of this changed over time, as did
the proposed ‘rational’ and ‘efficient’ solutions to ensuing domestic dilemmas.
The nature of these tensions were first spelled out in Alva’s and Gunnar’s
joint call for family friendly welfare reforms first published in 1934,
the year in which their second child was born (1934). Its title Kris
I befolkningsfragan, which in translation reads ‘population crisis’, was
aimed to draw attention to a general popular fear of continuing population
decline and thus rally support for family welfare reforms. Unlike much
other literature on the problems of the ‘industrialised’ family at the
time, the book presented a strong plea for women’s economic emancipation
as part of the solution of the problem. The book was written after the
Myrdals’ first study visit to the US in 1929, when they for a period had
left their two-year old son behind with relatives to travel widely in search
for new ideas and new academic contacts. They were both inspired
by theoretical developments in US interactionist sociology at the time,
and devoted much space in the book to changes in the ‘modern’ family.
With industrialisation and the location of economic production outside
the home, they argued, the institution of the family had come to loose
much of its rationale as a ‘working unit’ with many of its traditionally
shared productive functions handed over to outside agencies, employers
and the state. The process of urbanisation, which had
accompanied rapid industrial growth, had further led to family ‘dissolution’
through the growing isolation between individual ‘miniature families’.
New labour market realities necessitated increased economic ‘individualism’
and self-centredness for male wage earners, which in turn undermined the
collective needs of families and communities and thereby the economic independence
and autonomy of women as equals. As a result, women and children
had increasingly become subject to the ‘blatant patriarchal financial power
of men’ (1934: 189). Growing inequalities in living standards across
class had also come to exacerbate conflicting gender relations in the home.
The family was increasingly little more than a unit for consumption, with
the economic burden of family income generation increasingly placed solely
on the man, thereby strengthening his patriarchal power in the home.
For women this had led to strong economic tensions in the home, which were
fuelled by the newly won rights of political citizenship (1934: 352).
Poor and unequal educational opportunities added to such tensions and made women unable to help themselves. The poverty and destitution of both rural and urban working class women was in this book vividly described with passion and anger. But the picture Alva and Gunnar gave of the lives of isolated housewives, whatever their class, is not a flattering one, with the purposeless married woman ‘deprived of her functions in productive life and shut up in her miniature flat where she often becomes fat, lazy and egotistical’. Of all the problems such lonely women faced ‘the most tragic is that they have not even striven for improving their own professional domain through learning and knowledge about housework and child rearing’ (1934: 189). Women without access to up-to-date knowledge could not be expected to prepare children satisfactorily for independent working life, nor be a worthwhile partner and ‘comrade’ in a modern marriage of equals. This was seen as especially problematic in a rapidly changing and socially mobile society where the socialisation of children could no longer rely on outmoded traditionalism. The family was increasingly ‘a forum for discord between the old and the new’ (1934: 348). The preparation of children for greater independence, autonomy and mobility in the labour market was not a task for which uneducated, housebound and inactive women, in danger of overprotecting their children, were well prepared (1934: 357-360). Women were seen to have a great deal to learn from the more informed and efficient male sphere of work. Household chores could be made more effective through the use of modern technology and child rearing more knowledge based and professional, thereby also raising the status of women’s work in the eyes of the world. With children the human capital of the future, the study of their development demanded an equally serious and scientific approach to that of other aspects of production. Thus, women’s role as mothers as well as their need for education and economic independence was seen as in need of policy support. New style ‘afternoon families’ with adults working outside the home needed collectivised childcare and housing, better schooling and better training in how to care for children and the home. ‘If women are to be socially and economically equal with men, it must be in ways which take necessary cognisance of women’s different position in society as mothers of future generations, not through seeking “a tout prix” an absolute and identical similarity between the sexes’ (1934: 377).
A few years later, in her book Nation and Family, Alva outlined for an American audience the main tenets of the family oriented welfare proposals discussed in her and Gunnar’s by now famous book, and it gave a report on the progress of policy implementation in Sweden since the Social Democratic Party had come to power (1941). This book was published in connection with a further visit to the US, where on Gunnar’s insistence and in the midst of war and she had joined him, this time faced with leaving her by then three quite small children behind. Here Alva gave one of her chapters the title: ‘One sex a social problem’. She again emphasised the disharmony in the relation between marriage and gainful employment as the core of many women’s problem in comparison to men. But to the inequality of economic power between men and women she now added a further dimension: ‘the most profound curse of every woman’s life is the uncertainty of her life plan’ (1941: 421). The contradictions inherent in the roles of wife, homemaker, worker are unevenly distributed across time creating different tensions and demands depending on the age and the size of the family. She here reiterated the plea for greater ‘rationality’ in the relationship between work and home and for state supported collective solutions to the practicalities of managing the complex relationship between work and home. Her list of suggestions is long: the pooling of housework, co-operative nurseries and shops, organisations of housewives, and more women professionals teaching other women how better to manage their lives. But she showed less optimism here than in her earlier work with Gunnar, and states that ‘the practical difficulties are so numerous, however, that there will probably be a long transitional period...’(1941: 425).
In her later work on women, written in collaboration with Viola Klein and first published in 1956, the problems, as well as promises, inherent in women’s different life cycle are brought fully to the fore (1968; first published in 1956). Women’s Two Roles was in production when Alva for the first time had held full-time employment in major posts with the UN and UNESCO after leaving the family home in the late 1940s. Her children, the two youngest of which she had then left behind as teenagers to the largely unsatisfactory care of Gunnar and a housekeeper, were by now grown up. She had herself for seven years lived separated from Gunnar after a difficult period of no work, married loneliness and domestic conflict. In this book the problems facing women and their life choices were presented in even starker terms. We are offered a great deal of empirical evidence to show that women’s entry to the labour market, both for married and unmarried ones, continued unabated during the twenty years following her first contribution to these debates. But prejudices amongst employers and the public at large against working women still remained, and the demands on women’s performance in the domestic sphere had even become strengthened. The ‘cleavage between the two worlds of work and home is, for the majority of people, more complete today than it ever was in the past’ (1968: 27). Two contradictory ideals of women’s domestic roles were still seen as holding sway: '‘here are on the one hand the domestic virtues with the fragrance of freshly made bread everyday, together with the statistics showing a fourteen- to sixteen-hour working day. But there are also the costly cults of the lily-white hands, of lavish entertaining, and of changing one’s fashionable clothes oftener and oftener – the much advertised dreams of all that goes with being “well provided for” once one is married’ (1968: 5). The earlier expressed faith in the power of labour saving devices in the home is here proved unfounded by research evidence which showed the ever-increasing expectations on household and personal standards, and the limitless expandability of ‘household drudgery’ (1968: 37). ‘While on the one hand more and more gadgets are offered to save time and labour, more and more time-consuming beauty treatments are recommended to keep in control a feminine figure which shows the effects of too little exercise and too much leisure’ (1968: 6). The difference in attitudes and consciousness between women of different classes was also here noted as an issue. Whereas women doing routine low-paid work in factories and offices looked towards matrimony as a blessed relief, educated middle class women giving up work for domestic duties were left feeling frustrated and bored. But the family and its needs could not be written off, and there is a tone of maternal defensiveness in the book. ‘Even to the most ardent feminist it is clear to-day that work is no end in itself and that the past over-emphasis on careers at the expense of marriage and family has done great damage to the women’s cause’ (1968: 10). Women need to be in both domains both for themselves and for the sake of the family collective.
The solution to women’s labour market participation lay in the timing
of women’s reproductive life cycle. With increased longevity, women were
in fact increasingly having two lives, one with and one without children.
There need be no threat to husbands, children and the family, and no conflicts
for women if the right and need to work was exercised when children were
no longer maternally dependent. A full chapter of the book was devoted
to the effects on children of mothers’ working, both positive and negative,
and to varieties of evidence, on the whole inconclusive, about when in
a teenager’s life this point has been reached. In later adolescence the
latent conflict between the children’s need for independence and their
mother’s urge to expect compensation for their single minded devotion to
them often comes to a head and ‘terrible crises may then shake supposedly
harmonious homes’ (1968: 134). The preparation for work in
later life was seen to have the added bonus of saving marriages at risk.
‘It can not be healthy to join together in life long partnership two human
beings whose lives run at an unequal pace with interests far apart’ (1968:
27). There is little optimism here about what lays ahead for women,
and a distinct bitterness and sense of unfairness about why questions concerning
women’s work should be asked at all. ‘If men were asked why they work,
the great majority would no doubt answer that they have to support themselves
and their families. Nobody would pity them for it. It is taken
for granted that this should be so...Their personal problem is to adjust
themselves as well as possible to this given situation’ (1968: 88).
Though the most important avenue available to women in the search for freedom
from male patriarchal domination continued to be the labour market, the
social consequences associated with the growth of work for women remained
unsolved. Given women’s traditional role as mother and housekeepers,
there was a continuing need for a great deal of technical, educational
and social policy attention both by women themselves and by the state,
to facilitate the growing number of tasks expected of women. Women professionals
as part of ‘the elite’ had an important role to play in this, in creating
patterns later adopted by the community at large and ‘by their successes
and failures the outcome of women’s emancipation will be judged’ (1968:
150). But, as many later feminist have noted, including her own daughters,
there is little in any of this about the need for men to change as husbands
and fathers to accommodate the needs of women and children, and a very
pessimistic view of their capacity to change at all. However supportive
individual men may be the overarching view expressed was that change was
that change depended on the collective strength and enthusiasm of women
themselves, much in evidence in these writings. Her own relationship
with her husband, however ardent in his theoretical support for feminism,
provided every reason for her to think so.
Whereas Alva’s professional concerns were located in the domestic sphere, and her professional writings on women and families often a ‘theoretisation’ of personal realities, Gunnar’s personal reflections are to be found in footnotes and occasional ‘memories’ mostly relating to his own intellectual development and influences (Applequist and Andersson, 1998). In his occasional written references to Alva, she is a woman on a pedestal, both as an intellectual equal and as a personal mentor and supporter. He was deeply in love with her, both physically and intellectually, and took public pride in her good looks and feminine appearance and sense of style. As Gunnar’s American biographer Jackson writes, when they arrived again in the US in 1938, at the height of their fame as academics and Swedish welfare reformers, they made a fascinating pair with Alva, at thirty-six, ‘a striking blond, fashionably dressed, quietly self-confident with a direct gaze and serious demeanour, always polite and seldom at a loss for words’ (1990: 88). His devotion to her was life long, even if in action not always constant. In a joint interview of them both in old age by an American magazine, he noted, after sixty years of marriage, that people ‘don’t realise the great happiness there is in living and to be very old and together all the time. The older we get the closer we are’. When asked about his hobbies, he declared ‘Alva is my hobby’. ‘I have never believed in God’ he remarked to a friend ‘but there must be a God, or Alva would not have come to me’ (Jackson, 1990: 361). He publicly acknowledged his sense of dependence on her. When he made important decisions affecting his career, he presented Alva as the leading influence. In a brief autobiographical newspaper article in 1943, part of a series on leading Swedes of the time, Gunnar holds her responsible for his decision to take up the study of economics instead of law, a subject which he found stifling, unrewarding and ‘without horizons’. He wrote that ‘my wife, who already then had been with me for many years, had figured out that I ought to become an economist instead. During the summer of 1923 [the year before they married] she dragged home heavy tomes from the library and set me to work’ (Applequist and Andersson, 1998: 34). He also attributed his ‘moral’ development to her. The shift in his own writings from ‘cold technological curiosity about society’ to more practical concerns about how life could be made better for all, was caused partly, he argued, by the ‘strong and persistent influence of my wife, who on purely objective grounds has much more original goodness in her than I’ (ibid). Alva also played a significant role in their joint decision in the early thirties to work for the Social Democratic Party elite in furthering radical economic and social change. Whereas Gunnar’s own political family background lay in liberalism, Alva’s upbringing was more inspired by egalitarian and socialist political movements of the time, movements which put as high a premium on ‘moral goodness’ as on faith in technological development and economic progress (Bok, 1987, Nilsson, 1994).
But his dependence on her also brought pressures on them both. After returning alone to the US during the war to complete the writing up of his large team project on the ‘Negro’ in American society, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation and published as An American Dilemma, he found it hard to work without her and confessed to having doubts about his ability to get on (1944). When she was travelling across war torn Europe he frets about how poorly written his work is and writes ‘I am afraid that I was a little crazy - for reasons which you will now understand - ..’ (Jackson, 1990: 162). Then, as on many later occasions, he pulled out all the stops to get her to be with him, and she left her children behind with grandmother to join him, despite the difficult conditions of the war. Later in life, after several years of living and working apart, he joined her in India at her ambassadorial residence to write his large study Asian Drama. After seven years of living apart from him, Alva agreed to let him return, but only when she herself as Ambassador had a strong work domain of her own into which he could no longer, as an older and increasingly disabled man, intrude. It is again she who gave him help and intellectual reassurance when his work threatened to become to all encompassing and overwhelming. This is a theme often taken up by Jackson in his biography of Gunnar. Presenting Alva as one of the many great and influential intellectuals in Gunnar’s life, Jackson also brings out her social contribution to his intellectual career and her role in managing a large circle of international networking friends, all of whom instrumental in furthering their joint careers. If Gunnar was her passport to a more intellectually challenging and influential life, she provided social support for his ambitious aspirations. Having both come from less than happy, enclosed and rurally distant family life, their flight into a more interesting and upwardly mobile life in Stockholm and abroad, left them dependent on each other at every turn. It also left them professionally dependent on personal networks, which were both costly and time consuming to maintain for a couple without the private means normally associated with ‘elite’ life styles (Bok, 1987).
The children’s biographical writings are unanimous in their conclusion that, though feminist in ‘theory’, Gunnar’s behaviour as a husband and a father left much to be desired, especially when looked at from a contemporary perspective. Unlike many men of his generation he included his wife as an equal in all spheres of his professional and academic life, but his absence from the domestic sphere in all its manifestations was almost total. He was not himself entirely unaware of the limits of his adoration. In an appendix to The American Dilemma in which he made a comparison of the similarities between the status of ‘Negroes’ in the US and women, he makes wry comments about the role of wives relative to their patriarchal husbands. Here he wrote that in relation to both women and ‘Negroes’, white men generally preferred a less professional and more human relation, ‘actually a more paternalistic and protective position’. He continued, ‘In Germany it is said that every gentile has his pet Jew, so it is said in the South that every White has his “pet nigger”, or – in the upper strata – several of them. We [italics mine] sometimes marry the pet woman, carrying out the paternalistic scheme. But even if we do not, we tend to deal kindly with her as a client and a ward, not as a competitor and an equal...In the final analysis, women are still hindered in their competition by the function of procreation; Negroes are labouring under the yoke of the doctrine of unassimilability which has remained although slavery is abolished. The second barrier is actually much stronger than the first in America today. But the first is more eternally inexorable’ (1944: 1078). Here he referred in a footnote to Alva’s book Nation and Family published three years earlier. This appendix was to be of greater importance to the development of feminism than he could have envisaged at the time, since it became a source of inspiration for Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex (1953), a book greatly admired by Alva. Jackson records that this appendix was originally intended as a chapter of the report itself, but before publication removed as too contentious for its American readership (1990: 168).
The full story of Alva’s intellectual contribution to her husband’s
conception of national and international economics, and his continual insistence
on the location of the discipline in social institutional and moral contexts,
remains to be written. So does a fuller story of their sixty-seven
years’ of joint intellectual and political life, by their son in his acerbic
obituary of his father referred to as a ‘folie a deux’ (Jackson, 1990:
368). Her personal, social and domestic support for his extraordinary
and often relentless ambition is better documented in writings about them.
If the world had been allowed stay with Gunnar’s story, she would have
remained simply ‘the best’, with little indication that being ‘his best’
was not enough for others within the family. This picture was however
dramatically shattered when the first of several autobiographical books
written by their son Jan was published (1982). This came out when
they Alva and Gunnar were both in their eighties and in the same year that
Alva received the Noble Peace Prize. In working hard to serve and
support her husband’s as well as her own various ambitions, she had not
succeeded in serving her child’s needs for an emotionally secure home,
throwing seriously open to public doubt her reasoned attempts to educate
and transform the lives of other working women.
Jan was already a renowned writer and journalist, and in his fifties,
when he decided to write about his childhood (1982). 2)
In his discussion of Gunnar’s and Alva’s pain over their son’s first autobiographical
‘tales’ about his early childhood, Jackson sums up Jan’s descriptions of
Alva as ‘cold, manipulative and lacking in spontaneity’ (1990:363).
Overall, writes Jackson, Jan describes his parents as ‘not really concerned
with the poor, they wanted an upper-class lifestyle and the power to manipulate
people...[their] public image was a lie, covering up a failed marriage,
a disastrous relationship with their son, and phony politics ‘ (1990: 363).
Gunnar’s bullying aggressiveness and arrogant faith in his own abilities
were already well known through his behaviour in public life. But, the
exposure of Alva appeared all the more cruel since it did not tally with
Gunnar’s openly stated adoration, or with her public grace and charm, qualities
which had led her to become one of the world’s more famous international
diplomats. The book caused a political as well as a literary sensation,
partly because its publication coincided with a period of general revaluation
of decades of social democratic welfare state rule, but also because of
the emotive strengths of its depiction of the traumas of childhood.
Jan does not claim to be ‘objective’, but to write ‘his words’ as a ‘prose
story’ (1982: 7). But it put his mother and her domestic life firmly in
the public domain by offering a string of anecdotal memories of her behaviour
in the home and with him. In these descriptions of Alva’s relationship
with her son it is her behaviour as a mother that is at stake, and the
model of motherhood with which she is compared is one steeped in the very
past from which Alva had tried so hard to escape. His mother’s voice is
‘cold and blond’, her hands give a chill, and her eyes are also ‘cold and
grey’. She is often described as sitting behind him, or coming from
behind a door, coldly observing his behaviour and taking notes about him,
writing down his fantasy stories without understanding them. He hates
her shrill, bird like ‘twitter’ and artificial laughs, and angers over
her rejection of country relatives and their objects as not good enough
for her new life style. His grandmother ‘explains’ and treats him
like an equal, but mother just watches and observes, discussing his behavioural
problems with her emancipated woman friends behind his back. He is
her ‘wild child’ that does not fit in with her expectations of good behaviour
and he is permanently shamed for bad manners. After a spell with
his grandparents in the country during his parents’ absence in the US,
he even doubts his own paternity when he is returned with his sisters to
them. When hurt or miserable he is never comforted by mother but
always by others, a relative or a maid, and the comfort often takes the
form of drink or food. Meals cooked for his parents he can only have
as leftovers after his parents’ dinner parties if saved by a helper.
Father, guests and dinner parties always come first. When Gunnar
wants to get rid of ‘the little devils’, which is a daily event, mother
always obliges. She never admits to weaknesses and inability to deliver
when it comes to demands made on her by work or the world outside, only
to those of her son.
Jan presents his world as full of ‘masks’ and convenient lies to keep up appearances of order and success. He writes, ‘You could really put on whichever mask you wanted, as long as you knew the lines. If the one who played Alva fell ill, someone else could stand in and learn the role of the Alva mask and Alva clothes and be Alva in the performance’ (1982: 151). ‘Everything must appear proper. Even words. One must always remember that someone might be listening’ (1982: 184). At the many social events organised by his parents in the home, everything is treated as in the public domain. Alva keeps detailed financial accounts of everything in her management of the household and he learns how to ‘fiddle the books’. He doubts her status as a ‘real’ woman when he writes, ‘Alva is blond. Grandma is dark. They have different voices and different looks. Three times I have been married but none of my wives have been blond and none have been of Alva’s type...I do not like blonds’ (1982: 87). He describes his elder sister Sissela, with her high status marriage and professional academic success in the US as of the same mould. During the family’s joint trip to the US, described in a second book, he sees his life as even more dominated by famous persons and the need for good behaviour and appropriate language (1984). His presence in the family he sees as a total anomaly, with psychological experts and specialist teachers roped in to come to grips with him, whilst Alva, dressed to impress in the latest fashion, moves further and further away from his needs. Once back in the cold modernist ‘model’ house he is supposed to call home, he earns pocket money by assembling newspaper cuttings of his famous parents. He is forever excluded from his parents’ intimate and gossipy conversations about others. He never shares his feelings about his mother with his father, whose demands on her attention are forever present.
And so Jan’s ‘tales’ have continued with unrivalled literary skill about
the traumas of childhood, but also with public exposure of what he sees
as the consequences for him, and his youngest sister especially, of his
mother’s commitment to a life of professional fame and upwardly social
mobility. In one or the books he exposes the weaknesses in her marriage
and his father’s infidelity and records his only ‘private’ conversation
with him as a paternal expression of sorrow over the event. When
his mother has problems with getting a visa to America because of his own
strongly anti-American political activities he describes her as asking
him to refrain from seeing her for a while . With major public political
disagreements with his father and the Social Democratic party during the
sixties, the result is that he finally breaks with his parents for good
(1994). Unlike his sisters, Jan thus never experienced his parents
coming of age and their later life together, and his continuing public
attacks from the sidelines on their politics became part of a broader attack
on the Swedish political system, its welfare state and the role of his
parents within it. His perceptions of what Alva should have been
like, had she been a ‘real’ mother, have never mellowed in his descriptions
of family life. It became up to his sisters to defend her, and to
try to explain to the world why for them, as for thousands of other women,
Alva had become a facilitator and a role model in their own struggle for
independence, albeit a model frayed at the edges.
In the eldest daughter Sissela Bok’s biographical memoir of her
mother, Alva is presented to us as a path breaking pioneer with a powerful
vision of emancipated womanhood (1987). This memoir was written
at the end of Alva’s life when Sissela herself had become an established
academic in the US. 3) During the last years of her life, Alva
suffered from a disabling illness of brain tumour and afasia, a crippling
blow to a woman who had lived by the written and spoken word and whose
career had revolved around communicative exchanges. Her illness was
especially hard for her as it followed Jan’s hurtful criticisms, which
demanded verbal explanations, corrections and public debate. Sissela’s
memoir repeatedly refers to Alva’s expressed regrets and guilt about the
times in her life when she left the care of the children to others.
Where Jan’s comparative frame of reference is an idealised vision of old
fashioned motherhood that of Sissela is Alva’s own idealised dream of liberated
womanhood. From her youth this vision had three components: an equal partnership
within an emotionally and intellectually close marriage, a family with
happy and well adjusted children free from traditional authoritarian parental
domination, and a full productive life characterised by economic independence
and stimulating and worthwhile work. But, argues Sissela, this
vision was too grand, too contradictory and all encompassing to be realised
in practice in a world not ready for it and it came to grief on all fronts.
It was a precarious ‘balance’ between often conflicting self-chosen demands
the maintenance of which she had little help with from her husband
(1987: 75). Sissela’s account of her mother’s life is often interspersed
with Alva’s own retrospective evaluations as expressed in letters and tortured
conversations. The passionate relationship with Gunnar, which began
the moment they met when Alva was only seventeen, started as a liberation
and a passport to a more exciting and stimulating world first at university
in Stockholm, and continued abroad on various joint trips. But it
also triggered female submissive ‘self-denial’, when Alva upon meeting
him burned of all previous fictional writings and personal diaries to live
up to and match the cool rationality of a brilliant man whose career everyone
expected to come first (1987: 75). Far from starting
out as a career woman in her own right, Sissela describes her mother’s
early years as spent organising her and Gunnar’s joint life and household,
their discussion and planning meetings and dinner parties. She did Gunnar’s
typing for him and shared writing with him, following him where his needs
and interests brought them, albeit on grants of her own. Her own
earlier work was in comparison without clear direction, and came to concentrate
on her domestic world of child rearing, women’s issues and home making.
Most of her writings and organisational work whilst the children were small
were done on a part time basis with women teachers and campaigners.
Sissela points out that Alva was forty-seven years old before she had her
first full time job of her own, at the UN in New York. She took this
job in 1947 when Jan had already left home and the girls were in their
early teens. Gunnar was at the time in Geneva employed in a demanding
post with a large staff attached and for the first time did not need her
to work with him, except to arrange the expected social entertainment.
As a married foreign woman in post-war Switzerland she was besides legally
prevented from taking paid employment herself and had to contend with voluntary
engagements. She intends to leave the household a year only, but
never returned to joint family life again, leaving the girls to cope with
an absent Gunnar and a housekeeper unable to cope. Sissela describes
her mother’s feelings of being devalued, cornered and unable to cope without
Gunnar’s intellectual partnership or meaningful work of her own and only
able to realise herself away from him and increasingly meaningless domestic
demands (1987: 188-189).
Alva’s dream of a large, happy and close family life with liberated
children reared in a climate free from poverty and traditionalist oppression,
the kind of family life Alva wrote so much about, proved a disappointment
too. Children did not come easy, and she suffered several devastating
miscarriages, the latest when she was over forty. Far from not caring,
Sissela describes Alva as energetically and persistently struggling to
create a wonderful home, despite Gunnar’s demands on her and those of public
political life. She organises her days to find time for the children,
banning Gunnar from access to her until after seven in the evening.
She tells stories, makes dresses for the girls, organises toys, playrooms
and adventures to compensate for hers and Gunnar’s child free intellectual
‘holidays’ without them. She is often tired and torn between different
tasks outside and inside the home. Jan is from the start a difficult
child, sleepless and troubled, and Gunnar shows little interest in the
children. Alva on the other hand involves her children in her work
on pedagogy, both practically and intellectually. Once hers and Gunnar’s
radical and widely read book on welfare policy had been published, the
‘Myrdal family’ became public property. Gunnar’s political performance
as Minister in the post-war government was not very successful. The family
came to represent all that was ‘new’, ‘modern’, and threatening in women’s
emancipation, sexual freedoms, US inspired child rearing practices, functionalist
architecture and models of socialist collectivism. The admiration Alva
and Gunnar expressed for everything American in their home, as well as
in a popular book written during the was as a strong statement of anti-fascist
pro-democracy, added to their notoriety (1941). ‘Normal’ family life
became increasingly impossible with the press watching her and her children’s
every move, rising to outright hostility in the years following the war.
‘The Myrdals’ large joint desk, their twin beds with a movable partition
in the middle and the way their children were left on their own became
public jokes in Swedish households critical of the Myrdal’s aspirations
to modernity. This fame had hurtful personal consequences for the children
in school and with friends (1987: 180). When shortly
after the war Gunnar was offered an important
post with the UN’s economic commission in Geneva, Alva agreed to leave
Sweden and her many activities there, pack up and sell their famous house
and follow him. Sissela tells us that her mother did so for
the sake of the family, having turned down an offer of an international
post of her own. In juggling her commitments, her family came first
when her children were small and she hoped for a better life for the girls
in Geneva. Jan was by then twenty years old, and had already left
home after stormy teenage years dominated by violent conflicts with his
father.
Though never explicitly charging her brother with lying, Sissela presents
a very different picture of Alva’s priorities as a mother by emphasising
both her child oriented activities and by offering a more detailed chronology
of events as they happened with respect to Alva’s professional career.
In her descriptions of the idealism and conflicts in Alva’s aspirations
and her attempts to manage them over time, Sissela sees her mother as the
struggling ‘role model’ Alva herself as pioneer never had. In watching
her mother’s enormous joy and excitement in intellectually creative and
influential humanitarian work of various kinds, first part time and then
later in life as a full time worker, Sissela herself learns the value,
and cost, of independence. Through her mother’s faith in American
style ‘free’ child rearing practices and thus being left to her own devices
as a teenager, Sissela learned how to make her own decisions as a woman,
however hard and lonely they seemed at the time. As a result she
grows into her own intellectual professional and family life with better
tools than her mother ever had, and with more realistic ambitions, as well
as a clearer understanding of the need to make greater demands on her husband.
In discussions with her elderly mother about the many conflicting loyalties
experienced by Alva to her husband, herself and her children, Sissela sees
herself as learning to be more aware about what to demand and how to plan
her own marriage and her life. Sissela presents her mother’s self-confessed
‘failure’ to manage it all as well as she would have liked, despite her
many attempts to legislate for others, as a product of her powerful
vision of ‘having it all’ at a time when men like Gunnar were more feminist
in theory than in practice, and when society at large expected the Myrdal
family to be ‘perfect’ in all things. There is no romance in Sissela’s
memoir about the world Alva left behind, only concern about the failure
of her father to ‘modernise’ himself and meet her mother half way in taking
responsibility for the daily life of the family.
If the two men in Alva’s family did not agree in their conception
of Alva, neither in the end did her two daughters, though both of them
wrote of their admiration for her struggle for women’s emancipation.
The youngest daughter, Kaj Folster, in her autobiographical biographical
account of her own life within the family, presents us with a more radical
feminist perspective of her mother (1992). Her ‘story’ is subtitled
a ‘Myrdalian post script’ and was written as a critical response to the
writings of both her elder siblings. This book was published after her
mother’s death, and at a time when both feminism and biography as a genre
had moved deeper into the more private emotional tensions of the domestic
sphere. The youngest to arrive, she for many years as a child suffered
from ‘silences’ and speech problems, and she searches for the origins of
her own inability to express herself within a family so dominated by ‘talk’,
arguments and intellectual exchanges. She was only thirteen when
her mother left for her first full time job away from home, and was largely
left to fend for herself in a big and empty house in Geneva where the housekeeper
became ill and her father was always at work. In letters from her
mother she is even asked to ‘look after’ her father to alleviate her mother‘s
worries about having left. Kaj soon arranged to get herself invited to
stay with a large traditional Swiss family where she found herself
better cared for away from the rest of the Myrdals. She remained
in close emotional contact with her mother, and like Sissela, reaffirmed
this during Alva’s last illness. As in Sissela’s memoir, Alva here
stands out as an ambitious, brilliant and ‘good’ woman as well as a feminist
role model. When in despair Alva writes to her after the publication
of Jan’s book ‘Should I have stayed by the stove bearing children...?’,
Kaj replies ‘Thank God and hooray you didn’t!’ (1992: 190).
But for Kaj, Alva’s ‘goodness’ and her anxiety to please in all the roles
she took up, is also her fatal ‘womanly’ weakness, which made her a ‘victim’
to the two dominating and demanding men in her life: Gunnar and Jan.
On the basis of letters written by Jan to her mother, given to her for
safekeeping lest he tries to destroy them, she accuses Jan of crudely misrepresenting
his relationship to his mother. She also charges her sister with
refusing to expose Jan’s role in dominating Alva’s life. She writes
about Alva’s and Gunnar’s devotion to their eldest son and about Jan’s
constant demands on their time, their money, their services and tolerance.
Kaj describes herself as growing up in the shadow of the incessant and
destructive rows between Gunnar and Jan over the attentions of Alva, and
describes in painful detail her mother’s self-negating wish to please the
two persons she loved most. When the two men in the household argue
and fight, Alva retires silently in her room, unable to stand up to them
and unable to protect the girls and herself from their powerful dominance
(1992: 106). Alva’s faith in the power of reason, talk, diplomacy
and collaboration falls apart in front of their masculine power and control,
and ultimately proves too much for her, with the result that she leaves
the family home and her thirteen year old Kaj behind. The tone of
the letters she writes to Kaj, some of which Kaj refers to in her book,
is warm but brief, artificially cheerful and hurried. At the UN,
Alva has more important things to do than to worry about her daughter’s
need for a new swimsuit.
For Kaj, Alva’s role in the home, however domestically ambitious, was ultimately a traditional female one of mediating, glossing over, supporting, wheeling and dealing between the men, reasoning and giving way. It was not as angry and demanding as it should have been and did not put responsibility on the men around her. ‘It is a social handicap not to be a boy..’ says Alva, and Alva is unable to be a boy when it comes to demanding and asserting her own power in the household. When faced with her mother’s expression of retrospective guilt, Kaj wrote to her ‘...you should not have a bad conscience about me; that you should direct towards yourself in your weakness against Uvve [Gunnar]..so that he never needed to rethink but could continue his ingrained pattern of behaviour...’(1992: 183). Whilst Alva was alive, Kaj felt very protective of her mother as a ‘victim’ of their male dominance. She never herself told her mother of Jan’s abuses of her as a child in rough games and violent experiments, including sexual ones, nor the pain of her father’s absences and hurtful sarcasms. She could not trust mother to take her side or believe her over and above that of the men. Kaj feels that her elder siblings, in not telling this side of Alva’s story, have denied her the right to her own childhood memories. Kaj writes, ’I was also exposed to tensions, oppressions and abuses that did not square with the rational, progressive perspective on freedom, justice, equality and peace advocated by those in my family who could speak publicly’ (1992: 7). Like Alva, Kaj as a child became helpful, consoling, practical, but not angry enough, and like Alva her only option in the end was to leave the pretence of her famous family. ‘I could never be left at peace with my relationship to Alva without Jan standing there demanding her emotions and feelings..’ (1992: 28). She feels she hardly existed for her absent ‘workaholic’ father, except as an occasional ‘toy’ to show his friends. In her non-existence, she sees no need to speak at all. She could not trust her mother to act in her defence as the independent, responsible and strong adult she should have been.
In Kaj’s ‘story’, Alva meets us as a pioneering role model, but also
in the end as a ‘wounded dove’ whose aspirations to a world guided by more
female values is shattered by the men closest to her . Despite being
a self proclaimed feminist, Alva’s anger and fury with the men she started
life so eager to please is never forthcoming for Kaj to see, even at the
end, and Kaj can not confess her own anger to Alva for fear of hurting
her. Kaj’s more radical feminist criticism of Alva is summed up in
her call to her dead mother: ‘Alva, didn’t you understand, didn’t you see,
couldn’t you help me? It became all so twisted, because the person
my silence was aimed to protect was you, not Jan. It is so wrong to be
silent’. (1992: 73). In helping ‘the weak’ and ‘the oppressed’
in the world at large Alva was a heroine, but at home she was, in Kaj’s
story, unable to help, protect and defend her youngest daughter against
the consequences of a domineering husband and a bullying son. Her
failure to do so, in Kaj’s eyes, had a great deal to do with her ultimately
limited conception of what it meant to be a ‘good’ wife and a ‘good’ mother,
a conception which did not include the right, and the duty, to be angry
and domineering herself when circumstances required.
We can as outsiders to this set of intellectual exchanges and the
domestic drama that underlie them raise many further questions about the
nature of these stories, steeped as they are in time bound discourses about
what constitutes ‘good’ womanhood. We may in retrospect ask questions about
the appropriateness of motherly guilt in front of three children, each
one of whom in the end survived a childhood no more difficult than millions
of other children of hard working parents. We should also perhaps
query further our own motives in seeking to understand the complexities
of the private lives of an extraordinary family and the ‘chronocentricity’
of our own interpretations of its success and failures. But more importantly
in this context, we are also reminded that in relating ‘lived experience’
to social change, we need to be wary of whose experiences we are dealing
with and how they come to be expressed in particular ways. In applying
a theoretical ‘lens’ Alva herself used in presenting ‘modern’ womanhood
as contradictory and unresolved to some of the biographical writing s about
her, I have tried to bring her concerns about the status of women in society
to present concerns about the status of women in biographical writings.
In all her work, Alva saw intellectual activity as a moral as well as an
intellectual enterprise. Like her husband she saw as pointless and
dangerous a science that does not attempt to contribute to making the world
a better place for individual human beings. She preached her ideas
about a better world to governments and ‘ordinary’ people with equal passion.
In retrospect it is not surprising that what she herself in later life
described as her ‘moral arrogance’ inevitably came to evoke a strong response
of defence or attack by those who have written about her. In drawing
sociological attention to a picture of what ‘modern’ womanhood could be
like, professional, marital and maternal, if only rationally and efficiently
organised and financed, she also set standards which proved impossible
to reach for her as well as for millions of other women. But these
standards were in themselves products of a past where the gender expectations
of ‘successful’ men and women were so constructed as to be mutually incompatible.
Fulfilling either of these expectations well in the end inevitably denied
the other in the eyes all around, each from their own particular perspective
and standpoint of admiration, understanding or anger. The ‘story’
of Alva, like those Virginia Wolf and Simone de Beauvoir, provides us with
yet another vivid example of what Evans describes as the ‘impact of unresolved
family dramas on individuals, and consequently on intellectual life and
social ideas’. The forms in which they presented, and created, themselves
‘remains endlessly suggestive of the different ways in which women’s writing
is a very precise and determined engagement with masculinity...’ (1993:
12). For Alva, as for them, attempts to ‘order the world’ through
writing and participation in public life in the end met with disappointment
and the painful realisation of the limits of the enterprise as she defined
it. I have here tried to argue that this engagement is also at the heart
of biographical writings about women and the continuing complexity of the
relationship between their contribution to public and domestic life.
.
1) It has become customary in feminist writing about biographical
material to place oneself in relationship to the interpretations offered.
My own experience as a working woman and mother is undoubtedly of some
relevance. So is a quote about the conditions of womanhood from a
recent Swedish feminist text, for which I have sadly lost the reference,
which helped me understand why the picture of Alva remained so confused
and contradictory the more I read by and about her. It goes in translation
as follows, ‘If you raise your voice you are told that you are aggressive
and difficult. When quiet you are seen as weak and evasive.
As a girl you are expected to be soft and sensitive. If you are soft
and sensitive you are seen as lacking in focus and unsure of yourself.
If in the other hand you act tough and hard, they think you are not feminine
enough’. Alva was after all ‘just a girl’.
2) When the first book about his childhood came out, Jan was already
known as a writer in both Europe
and America, especially
for his book on developments in rural China: Report from a
Chinese Village
(1965) New York: William Heinemann Ltd.
3) At the time of publishing the memoir of her mother, Sissela had become professor at Brandeis University, USA, and had briefly before published the book Lying: moral choice in public and private life (1980) London: Quartet Books.
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Vanessa May
Department of Sociology
Abo Akademi University
Gezeliusgatan 2
FIN-20500 Abo
Finland
Email: vmay@abo.fi
Fax: +358-(0)2-215 4808
This paper looks at the life stories written by women with children
in Finland who say that they at some point in their lives have contemplated
divorce or separation, and focuses on how the decision process is narratively
constructed. The aim is to uncover the explanations used by the writers
to justify their decision either to stay in the relationship or to seek
divorce or separation. The justifications employed by the writers are mostly
of moral nature, and children are key figures in these narratives. Both
the divorced mothers and the mothers who stayed married say that they have
had their children's best interests at heart. This apparent paradox disappears
with a closer examination of the justifications used. The divorced mothers
construct their divorce as an act of protecting their children from a bad
father or an unhappy home, while the married mothers argue that they have
to some extent sacrificed their own happiness so that their children can
grow up in a two- parent family. The writers say that they have divorced
for their children or remained married for their children, in both cases
succeeding to present themselves as "good" mothers, who protect their children
even at the expense of their own happiness.
According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1996, 24), individualization means
the disintegration of previously existing social forms and normal biographies.
Giddens (1991) has coined the term ‘pure relationship', which he defines
as "a social relation which is internally referential, that is, depends
fundamentally on satisfactions and rewards generic to that relation itself"
(Giddens 1991, 244). Pure relationships are not embedded in tradition,
that is, traditions are no incentive for individuals to stay in a relationship.
A pure relationship is constantly being re-evaluated by the persons in
it, and if they deem it to be unsatisfactory and see no way of improving
it, they terminate the relationship (cf. Giddens 1992). Before, in the
world of tradition, people did not have this reflexivity at hand, and remained
in relationships because it was the done thing. As Barbara Adam (1996,
139), however, points out, reflexivity is not solely the prerogative of
modern individuals, as "reflexivity is ontological to all of humanity,
to what it means to be human". Adam (1996, 139) also argues that the diminishing
power of tradition in some areas does not mean that individuals can now
act without restriction, in other words be guided solely by internal authority,
since often traditional authorities are simply replaced by other external
authorities.
The increasing industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and level of education since the 1950s have been accompanied by a liberalization of general attitudes towards sexual morality and divorce (Koskelo 1979, 57-61; cf. Stone, 1990; Coontz 1997; Hofsten 1983; Kristiansen 1977; Kooy 1977; Boigeol, Commaille and Roussel 1977, on similar developments in other industrialized countries during the twentieth century). The emotional aspect of marriage has become more important than the financial aspect (Koskelo 1979; Reuna 1997). Individuals are now more able to survive financially outside a family context, and expect more emotional gratification out of marriage. The trend in Finland after the Second World War was increasingly to marry out of love and to demand "psychological harmony" and emotional intimacy between spouses (Waris 1961, 45; Jallinoja 1984, 61; cf. Gullestad 1984; Giddens 1992, on similar developments in other countries). Strandell (1984) has shown that younger generations of Finnish women in the 1970 began to question and discard the notion that a wife and a mother should sacrifice her own happiness in order to ensure the happiness of other family members.
The 1960s and 1970s were a time of ideological battle between the proponents of traditional familialism and secular individualism (Helin 1974, 28; Jallinoja 1984). Proponents of the individualistic view on families became more vociferous in the 1960s, demanding that people should be free to love whomever they choose, and have the right to decide for themselves when to end a marriage (Jallinoja 1984, 50-51). Even proponents of familialism revised their opinions and during the 1960s accepted the view that "destructive" marriages should be allowed to end (Jallinoja 1984, 51).
Changes in Finnish divorce law reflect the changing ideological environment. Individualistic arguments were central in the demands for changes in divorce law, increasingly debated since the 1970s. The old divorce law from 1929, based on the idea of the common good of marriage (Mahkonen 1980, 199), was replaced by new legislation in 1988, based on the notion of individual right to end a marriage by agreement. This no-fault divorce legislation is characterized by the individualistic notion that people should be able to ascertain for themselves when their marriage was beyond repair, without having to convince a court, an external authority, of this (Jaakkola 1989).
The number and proportion of divorces has steadily increased in Finland since the 1960s. The divorce rate—divorces per 1000 inhabitants—has risen from 0.83 in 1960 (Statistical Yearbook of Finland 1962, 50) to 2.6 in 1997 (Statistics Finland 1998:12, 133). The number of divorces has increased from 3,655 in 1960 (Statistical Yearbook of Finland 1962, 50) to 13,507 in 1997 (Statistics Finland 1998:12, 132). The generally accepted view is that more liberal divorce laws lead to more divorces, but Mahkonen (1980) argues that the nature of divorce laws does not have effect on the rate of increase in divorces.
The effects of the social changes since the 1960s have continued to
the present day, although the disagreement between proponents of familial
family views and individualistic ones still continues. It is, however,
questionable whether Finland has become, or is in danger of becoming, the
anti-family individualistic society feared by many. In the 1980s, Finnish
people continued to hold relatively traditional views on family, for example
preferring a family based on biological ties to being single (Ritala-Koskinen
1994). Also in the 1990s, the general values on family in Finland could
be considered familial (Reuna 1997). Many researchers, however, argue that
the detraditionalization thesis holds true also for Finland (e.g., Airaksinen
1994; Eräsaari 1994). The Finnish debate on the future of family life
is very similar to debates in other countries. The belief that detraditionalization,
and more specifically, individualism have an impact on family behaviour
is reflected in the choice of title for the anthology Ydinperheestä
yksilöllistyviin perheisiin (1994), which translated into English
means From the nuclear family to individualistic families.
Five of the writers were born in the 1920s, six in the 1930s, four in the 1940s, and the remaining three in the 1950s. The writers describe experiences of marital unhappiness from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Six of the life story writers come from an urban background, seven grew up in the countryside, and two in small country towns. Eleven writers have a middle-class background, and four come from a working-class family. Three of the writers do not write enough about their background to say where they grew up, or whether they came from a middle-class or a working-class background.
Most of the life story writers give more than one reason for why they were unhappy in their marriage. The main reasons are husband's alcoholism, violence, or unfaithfulness, and incompatibility or growing apart. One of the life story writers fell in love with another man.
Women's Lives in Swedish-Speaking Finland was not organized in the form of a competition, unlike previous life story collections in Finland that have published the best life stories. The writers were assured complete anonymity. An important aspect of the life stories analysed here is that the women had free hands as far as the project was concerned to write the story of their lives. There were no suggested topics given, and therefore the writers could write about what they felt should be included in their life stories. Most of them did, however, follow autobiographical conventions such as linear chronology and structuring their narrative around certain culturally shared milestones such as marriage and the birth of their children (cf. Coleman 1991; Elliott 1990).
A life story collection such as Women's Lives in Swedish-Speaking Finland has both strengths and weaknesses when used for research. On the positive side, my preconceptions and prejudices have not affected what the writers wrote about and how. In a study on divorce, this is of specific importance, as most studies on divorce are conducted as semi-structured interviews or as statistical studies, where the researcher's questions shape the material from the beginning. It is important to examine what people write about divorce and in what way when not specifically urged to do so by a researcher. The use of personal narratives allows the researched persons to enter the research process as active agents, who create what is said, and set the boundaries to what the researcher can know about their lives (Graham 1984). Story-telling allows for the writers to show the complexity of their lives, thus making it easier for the researcher to avoid fracturing their experiences (Graham 1984, 119).
But life stories can also be problematic in the sense that the researcher cannot ask for additional information or for more detailed accounts. Therefore, I am dependent on what the writers have chosen to write about, and must make do with sometimes scarce descriptions of those aspects and issues I wish to study.
The present study falls within the narrativist tradition of life story research. In other words, I have read these life stories as narratives that document not so much what the writer actually thought or did, but how she presents her thoughts and actions (cf. Hyvärinen 1998; Coleman 1991; Elliott 1990; Roos 1987, for a discussion about the various ways of reading life stories). I propose that the difference between the realist and the narrative approach is one of level: a realist reads through the narrative to an underlying reality, reads the narrative as a document on this, and consequently regards the research to be on this reality. A narrativist does not read through to an underlying reality, but reads the narrative as one form of reality, as a textual reality (term from Smith 1990). A narrativist does not claim to be studying the underlying reality of the phenomenon in question, but rather, the text is part of that reality or phenomenon (cf. Carr 1985). I propose that since the boundary between realism and narrativism is not necessarily a clear-cut one, it is reasonable to adopt a term that combines the two aspects. 'Textual realism' (cf. Smith 1990) would be such a term that emphasizes that texts are reality and as such valid objects of research. In the present study, for example, the life stories are analysed as reflections of larger social issues pertaining to the sociological debate on detraditionalization.
Barbara Laslett (1990, 416) argues that individual life stories should
be used as case studies in sociology, with the aim of understanding the
subjective meaning of events and the connections between an individual
life and the larger social context. As Hilary Graham (1984, 119) states:
"Stories are pre-eminently ways of relating individuals and events to social
contexts, ways of weaving personal experiences into their social fabric".
To the sociologist, studying life stories is useful for what they reveal
about social life—culture "speaks itself" through an individual's story
(Riessman 1993, 5; see also Mills 1959). Life stories show us how people
present, justify, and argue for their decisions and actions, for their
life, but are also reflections of wider discourses and ideological climates.
Thus I am not arguing that the writers actually did what they did for the
reasons they say they did, but rather that the fact that they use the arguments
that they use can be used as proof that these arguments are culturally
valid.
The writers with alcoholic and violent husbands see the problem of their
marriage to lie outside of their relationship, even outside of their husband.
Violence and alcoholism are therefore not expressions of his "inner core".
This becomes clear as the writers connect their husband's drinking with
work and outside temptations, and violence with "something strange" or
out of the ordinary as compared to how they normally view their husbands.
Thus it becomes understandable that not all of the writers see their husband's
alcoholism as a reflection of their marriage:
There was no personal antipathy between us, no grudges, no unwillingness
to be together. The external circumstances had driven us to this point.
(KLiv 14, born 1924)
The writers who describe their husband's alcoholism often see the problem
originating in their husband's work which requires him to wine and dine
with customers or business partners:
Then came a time with many trips, evenings out, weekend courses,
and so on, and the family saw father at home more and more rarely. Gradually
alcohol came into the picture. It became worse and worse, and the 1970s
is a time I would rather forget. (KLiv 114, born 1932)
The drinking increased. [My husband's] work "tempted" him because he could be away from home for weeks sometimes. In any case there was a lot of drinking, fights… (KLiv 9, born 1949)
The writers whose husbands beat them can describe how their husband
would get a strange look in his eyes when he became violent, and other
ways in which his countenance or behaviour departed from the normal:
But then I see his staring look, the one that always comes when
at some point during his attacks he becomes so livid that his whole physiognomy
and psyche change. (KLiv 95, born 1943)
The writers account for how they imagined such an external problem being solved, either by the husband discontinuing his drinking or violence. Alcoholism and violence therefore emerge as tangible problems that something can be done about.
When violent men talk about their violences against women (e.g., Hearn 1998; Hautamäki 1997), they describe violence as residing within them, teased out by a woman's behaviour. Violence is thus defined as being part of male nature, repressed and dormant but nevertheless ever-present. Yet in the life stories in this study, the writers present the husband's violence as completely the opposite. His violence is not an expression of his "inner core" or his "real" nature, but an action that they cannot explain by referring to his personality. Violence does not lie dormant within him, but is rather something alien that invades the husband. This gives a key to understanding why the reader in many cases receives conflicting information about the husband: a brutal husband can also be described as "a good father". If a writer sees her husband's violent behaviour as alien to his real character, it is possible for her to view him as an essentially good man who can reform his ways. The violence endured by the writers is not explained in these life stories, and often emerges in the narratives out of context. Few writers describe the situation of the violent acts, or what explanations their husbands offered for them. The husband's violence thus obtains the nature of an inexplicable aberration.
In contrast, the writers who have grown apart from their husbands perceive the origin of their marital problems to lie in their husband's personality. The problem is thereby an integral part of their relationship, and it appears in the life stories to be more difficult to solve such a problem. The death of emotions is intangible and difficult to counteract. Only a complete change of personality would help, and this appears as unrealistic in light of our modern view of individuals. As one writer puts it: "He has so many good sides, if only he were a bit happier." (KLiv 33, born 1922)
Also the writers who tell that their husband has been unfaithful seem
to see this as an unsolvable problem. The pain may go away, but trust is
hard to reinstate, and some painful scars are always left. These are modern
relationships based on emotions (Giddens 1992) and it is the emotional
base of the relationship that is damaged by such an act of unfaithfulness.
It is an act against the relationship itself. The husband falling in love
with someone else means that the relationship between the writer and her
husband is at least partially destroyed.
Having to learn to trust one's husband again has been and is
difficult, but the day is taken as it comes. (KLiv 119, born 1956)
This [my husband falling in love with another woman] did not lead to a break-up in our marriage, but our relationship was never the same and I found it very difficult to get over what had happened. (KLiv 114, born 1932)
Now the pain is no longer as "sharp", but it exists – still – underneath. Will I never forget? (KLiv 1, born 1932)
The last quote comes from a life story given in diary form. The writer never offers an explanation for why she stayed with her husband, but earlier excerpts from her diary attest to the importance she placed on her family. And the later excerpts show how she continued to feel pride over her family, but this happiness was dented by the ambiguous relationship she continued to have with her husband.
The following writer alludes to her husband's unfaithfulness while they
were almost newlyweds. In her mind, it was for the sake of their first
child, born some time after the incident, that she remained in her marriage:
The first serious crisis in our marriage came a bit later, when
my husband developed tuberculosis as a result of "the Asian flu", a difficult
influenza. In hospital, where he was for half a year, he met a nurse he
felt attracted to. This did not lead to a break-up in our marriage, but
our relationship was never the same and I found it very difficult to get
over what had happened. Only when daughter was born I thought she was a
gift worth forgetting the past for. But it was difficult. (KLiv 114, born
1932)
In the last two life stories, the writers present their decision to stay in their marriage within a family context—it is not only the relationship that matters, it is also the whole family that they have taken into account.
In summary, violence and alcoholism emerge from outside the relationship, whereas growing apart and unfaithfulness originate in the relationship, showing that something is wrong or lacking on the emotional level of the relationship. Whereas violence and alcoholism are hurtful to the writer, the writers do not however necessarily see them as expressions of the relationship itself. They appear more as weaknesses in the husband, caused by external pressures or then left unexplained. The emotional bond between the writer and her husband may be damaged, but not irreparably, and not completely. In the life stories that depict a couple grown apart, the emotional bond appears non-existent or tenuous. This difference has an effect on how the relationship is later justified in the life story.
There are indeed echoes of the pure relationship (Giddens 1991; 1992)
in these accounts of marital relationships. The writers view their marriage
as based on emotions, and as such prone to re-evaluation if this emotional
bond undergoes change. The relationships described in the life stories
are not ones that continue unquestioned, but are seen by the writers to
be under threat. Thus, marriage is not taken for granted, but emerges as
a relationship that has to be kept going through the efforts of the two
adult parties involved.
The writer makes it clear that she is aware that leaving her husband
was not solely beneficial to her son and that she is aware of the general
belief that growing up without a father can be harmful to a boy:
There were so many questions that I asked myself. Was I hurting
the child, when I in this way robbed him of his father? He, the little
one, could after all not affect this decision. I knew that he probably
would experience that he almost had no father, so little contact did [my
husband] have with the boy's half-brother who was five years older. Now
I would, through my decision, rob him of daily contact with his son,
another man. I had no one in my small family who could act as "pretend
father". My brother lived mostly in another area and I had only sporadic
contact with him. I did not have any male friends who I could turn to in
order to be able to provide some sort of male model for the child. Would
I manage to prepare a varied enough upbringing for a child, a boy, as a
single woman? I thought about this a lot and realised that it would be
a problem. (KLiv 95, born 1943)
These two writers left their husbands in order to protect their children from a depraved life and from violence.
Many of the other writers, who in the end did not leave their husbands,
took steps towards divorce, either moving away from home or filing for
divorce, but in the end returned. They present their concern for the well-being
of their children as a reason for their intentions of leaving:
I and the children felt ourselves neglected, the shared moments
and work between family members became all the more infrequent, besides
these moments were characterized by stress, nervousness, fighting. (KLiv
14, born 1924)
I started to think more and more about divorce. Everyone suffered because of our conflicts. I knew that it was wrong but I could not manage any longer. It would be better for the both of us if I moved out. I started organizing the divorce papers without telling anyone. I had decided that I would move out. (KLiv 112, born 1947)
Also the children started to suffer from the disharmony even though this was seldom, as my husband showed himself very rarely at home. (KLiv 119, born 1956)
As will be shown in the following section, the writers present the well-being of their children also as a reason for in the end remaining in their marriage. This shows that what is best for children is not always self-evident, as many of the writers feel that their children would have suffered both if their parents stayed together and fought, and if they divorced.
The two writers who describe themselves and their husbands as incompatible
and make the decision to divorce use their own individual happiness as
a reason for leaving. There are, however, significant differences in how
they are able to justify their decision on account of their children, which
I attribute to the thirty-year gap between the events described. The first
writer gave custody of their child to her husband, since she felt powerless
to do otherwise. She had caused a scandal and broken against the norms
of motherhood by leaving her husband and child in the 1950s, and was socially
inferior compared to her husband. This left her little to bargain with
when it came to the custody of her child. She implicitly accepts, or accepted
at the time, the blame placed on her, apparently by her husband, and offers
this as an explanation for why she agreed to leave her child:
In November 1948 I wandered out from [my husband's] villa with
minimal baggage – not much that was there was mine – after having promised
him that he could keep [our son] with him. It was after all I who was unnatural
and egoistic and furthermore impractical. He had persuaded me that he with
his resources could better take care of the child than I could, we would
co-operate over everything else. (KLiv 71, born 1920)
This writer sees that she paid the ultimate price of losing her child
in order to gain fulfillment in her life. She says that she could not have
gone on living the life she was living, in social circles not her own,
with a husband who did not understand who she really was, and without intellectual
stimulation. This episode in the writer's life is described in painful
terms; painful both for the writer and those around her, especially for
her child and her mother:
It was not only [my son] who was affected by my actions – it
is not too much to say that this destroyed mother. Had I continued to live
within her periphery she would have been able to bear the grief and scandal.
(KLiv 71, born 1920)
The second writer left her husband in the 1980s. By this time it was
more acceptable for a wife to leave her husband on grounds of irreparable
breakdown, and the writer was secure in her knowledge that her financial
situation was good enough to support her children. She gives her good salary
as one reason why she could divorce, since she had witnessed how her mother
had been trapped in a marriage with an alcoholic because she could not
have survived financially on her own. As many other writers, also this
writer says that she contemplated continuing her marriage for the sake
of her children, but that in the end she decided that they would not benefit
from living with two warring parents:
I thought for long that I should keep our marriage together for
the sake of the children, but after many weeks of contemplation I realized
that in that case I would be doing the wrong thing. Children do not thank
you afterwards for having done it and they cannot have a secure upbringing
if the relationship between their parents does not work. (KLiv 48, born
1944)
There is not the same feeling of guilt here as in the previous life story. For one thing, this writer felt it her automatic right to receive custody over her children, which she also did. For her, leaving her husband represents an act of independence and courage, one she does not regret: "Once I had made up my mind, I realized it was the best decision in my life." (KLiv 48, born 1944). The writer goes on to describe the surge of energy she felt after the difficult period of coming to a decision over her marriage, and how she quickly managed to organize all the practical matters related to her divorce.
So far, these life stories could be used as proof for Giddens' (1992)
thesis that marriages today are based not on tradition, but on the pure
relationship. In the life stories, the writers recount how their personal
unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their relationship led them to consider
divorce. This is indeed what the concept of the pure relationship entails:
once the relationship no longer affords gratification for the persons involved,
the basis of the relationship has disintegrated and the relationship is
terminated. However, as I will show below, that the writers view their
relationship with their husband as pure, does not automatically entail
that they view their marriage in the same light. For them, there are other,
often more important, reasons for keeping the marriage intact or terminating
it even after the pure relationship has died. For the writers, marriage
is more than the relationship between themselves and their husband—it is
the glue that keeps their family together.
The difficulties at home did not get better with time. In pure desperation I took my belongings and moved away from [my husband], even twice, but always returned. The ties were strong, we had been married for so long, and of course there were still feelings, also on my part. (KLiv 116, born 1921)
The writers also present their husbands' promises to mend their ways
as a reason for continuing with their marriage:
And then all the straws! He said that it was the last time! He
will never, ever lift his hand against me. He promised. Begged for forgiveness.
He begged me to come back. He cried and begged. This straw was enough for
me. And I accepted it each time. Time after time. Only to once again after
a while be equally disappointed. (KLiv 95, born 1943)
[My husband] promised sacredly never to drink again. He stopped smoking also and we bought a house. Six years went well, I thought. [My husband] started drinking again. He blamed it on the lack of jobs… (KLiv 9, born 1949)
The husband as a character seems divided in these life stories. On the one hand, he is the man who drinks or is violent, while on the other hand he is the man the writer fell in love with and continues to have feelings for. His pleadings are presented; he cares for the writer also. The writers say it is difficult to leave a man one loves.
None of the writers who stayed with their violent and/or alcoholic husband
say that their husband would have hit their children—indeed one expressly
says that he did not: "But the children's father was mostly nice towards
them, and that helped a lot" (KLiv 108, born 1935). Another writer praises
her husband's parenting, despite him having caused her misery through his
drinking and long absences from home:
[H]e was a wonderful father when he was one. We always said Quality
before quantity!! (KLiv 119, born 1956)
The same writer repeats this sentiment at the end of her life story,
emphasizing how important it was for her that her children had a good father:
My husband is a very good father and this is very important since
the children are the biggest piece of me. (KLiv 119, born 1956)
But there are also other reasons for why so many of the writers with
alcoholic and/or violent husbands remained married. Some writers recount
how they gradually isolated themselves from friends and family in order
to hide the fact that their husband drank and/or beat his wife. The writers
seem to in effect have painted themselves into a corner: by remaining silent
about their husband's behaviour, they became accomplices in his drinking
or violence, and found it impossible to seek outside help. It is difficult
for a woman feeling isolated and alone to leave her husband:
I became a recluse, did not want to meet friends, I even avoided
people in the stairwell. I became apathetic, just sat, wanted to escape.
(KLiv 14, born 1924)
I could not really ever invite anyone home. [My husband] could have been drunk and mean. I isolated myself as an alcoholic's wife does. I have not got over this yet, I feel, even though it has happened that I have invited home a few colleagues [since my husband died]. (KLiv 9, born 1949)
In between there were better periods as well, but I was always imprisoned. (KLiv 9, born 1949)
Some writers write about how their husband gained almost total control
over their lives, controlling the writer's behaviour and actions:
I was to do as he wanted, wished, demanded, if not for anything
else then for the sake of piece at home. [ . . . ] And he got me to give
him a lift into town [to go drinking]. I was like any other alcoholic's
wife, again. I did as he told me to. (KLiv 9, born 1949)
Out on the streets I walked with downcast eyes so that he would not get the idea that I knew the men who walked past us. (KLiv 95, born 1943)
One life story writer gives a vivid picture of her life as an alcoholic's
wife, depicting the feelings of helplessness and imprisonment that prevented
her from leaving her husband:
To be torn inside, to not trust anyone, to not develop belong
to the qualities of an alcoholic's wife. No confidential relationships,
only a beautiful face outwards. To sacrifice oneself to alcohol. Anxiety
and feelings of guilt. This was my life for almost 25 years time. It is
not easy to free oneself from that closed world and let in outsiders. It
is not easy to bare one's emotions, both sorrow and happiness. It was as
if I was the living dead. I cry at times but most often in secret. Fear
and despair have dominated life for a long time. The battle between loathing
and loyalty was hard. Life has gone past. My husband was in love with alcohol.
(KLiv 9, born 1949)
Thus we see that there are other forces than positive emotions that keep a woman married to an alcoholic or violent man. She may feel incapable of leaving him and beginning a new life on her own, she may be afraid of his reprisals if she attempts to terminate the relationship, or she may feel so bogged down by her life that she sees no way out. In many of the life stories quoted above, the relationship no longer afforded any pleasure to the writer—on the contrary, it was the source of great personal pain and anxiety, and was described as a prison.
In the life stories where the relationship is described as emotionally
cold or distrustful, such strong emotions, both negative and positive,
as above are not presented. On the contrary, it is the lack of love, trust,
and companionship that is the cause for the marital unhappiness. Children
are presented as the reason for staying; the children are not to suffer:
I have thought that I will put up with it for the sake of the
children until [my youngest son] reaches 18 but he is only 12 now so we
will have to see how it goes. (KLiv 62, born 1951)
And even so our marriage has held. We celebrated our golden anniversary a few years ago. Of course I have been ready to pack my bags several times, but the children were not to suffer. I was myself a child of divorce and that experience I did not want my girls to go through. (KLiv 33, born 1922)
But he was a good father. He had patience and played a lot with the children. (KLiv 112, born 1947)
Also the following writer, who herself fell in love with another man,
decided not to divorce her husband on account of her children:
My sister was expecting her other child so she could baby-sit
and I could continue studying French at [school]. I fell deeply in love
with my French teacher and he with me. He wanted me to leave my family
and follow him to [France] where he had his home but I could not build
a new life by making three people unhappy, I just could not leave two small
children and a sick husband. Now when I look back at it I think I did the
right thing even though it was a very difficult choice. (KLiv 21, born
1926)
In all of the life stories the well-being of the children become central in the arguments for staying or leaving. The life story writers wish to convince the reader that they have done what they have done with the best interests of their children in mind. The writers who stayed with their husbands did so knowing that their husband was a good father whose absence would hurt their children in the event of a divorce. Also the writers who divorced their husbands say they did so in order to ensure the well-being of their children. Some of them divorced so as to protect their children from physical harm, while one writer argues that the fights between herself and her husband were more harmful to their children than the absence of their father proved to be. Only one writer can not give her child's best interests as a reason for her divorce, and indeed her account of her decision is a pained one. Most of the writers thus present their marital decisions as those of a mother, not as those of an independent individual, thus negating the argument that modern individualism has paved the way to the death of traditional family values and even the death of the traditional family as an institution. As Gerris (1994) argues, changes in ideological climates such as an increase in individualism do not necessarily lead to direct changes in how people live in and think about their own family.
In Family Obligations and Social Change (1989), Janet Finch presents her thesis over the change in family obligations that has occurred in contemporary Western societies. She proposes that family relationships and obligations are negotiated commitments rather than taken-for-granted responsibilities—family relationships have to nowadays be worked out. Indeed, the life story writers in the present material view their marital relationships as relationships that need work and that do not come naturally. In this sense, their obligations towards their husbands are negotiated. Yet, how the writers present their obligations towards their children cannot be interpreted in a similar way. The responsibilities that the writers take upon themselves as mothers reflect more the traditional taken-for-granted feelings of obligation that mothers were supposed to feel towards their children.
In 1972 Bernard (1972, 96) said that in the United States "the current
trend seems to be in the direction of commitment for only as long as the
relationship between the partners is a good one". Similar opinions on the
impermanence of contemporary marriages have been expressed in Finland (e.g.,
Sinkkonen 1998), and are the implied message in Giddens' (1991; 1992) and
Beck's (1992) theses on detraditionalization. Such a view does not hold
true for the life stories analyzed here. Instead, they portray women who
have stuck with unhappy relationships, sometimes for decades, often in
order to ensure what they think would be in the best interests of their
children. In this sense, the existence of a ‘modern' relationship between
husband and wife is not enough to make divorce ‘easier'. Other traditional
values pertaining to the family, mainly the responsibility a mother has
towards her children, can play a more significant role in how people view
their families and familial relationships.
Children are central in all the life stories, in that the writers use the well-being of their children as a justification for their decisions about continuing or discontinuing their marriage. However, the familial framework becomes apparent in different ways in the two groups of life stories. In the violent and alcoholic life stories it is the relationship between husband and wife that keeps the marriage going, as long as the writer feels that her children are safe. In the life stories that describe growing apart, it is not the relationship between husband and wife that is the glue of the marriage, but the family form. These writers feel that it is of the utmost importance that their children live in a family with two parents, and the writers present themselves as mothers who are willing to provide their children with this two-parent family at the cost of their own marital satisfaction. In summary, in the violent and alcoholic relationships, it is the ties that bind husband and wife that keep them together, and the well- being of their children that separate them. In the life stories where the writers describe having grown apart from their husband, it is the well-being of their children that keep the marriage intact. These different frameworks are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Justifications used by the writers for their marital decisions.
Problem: Violence/alcoholism Growing apart
Solution: Divorce Remain Divorce Remain
Argument: Children's Relationship Relationship Children's
well-being (individualism) (indiv.) well-being
(familialism) (familialism)
Figure 1. shows how the wives of violent and alcoholic men use familial arguments for divorce, while the writers of the other group of life stories use such arguments for remaining. And vice versa: individualistic arguments for remaining are used by the writers with violent and alcoholic husbands, while the writers who have grown apart use such arguments to explain why they divorced.
The writers act within a particular ideological framework, that of the dominant family ideology in Finland, which states, among other things, that two parents are better than one, and that marriages are based on emotions. The writers implicitly accept the nuclear family ideology and wish to present themselves and their actions within this framework. All of the writers except one do manage to do this by presenting their children as central, and by presenting their acts as acts of mothers, not of individual women. This means that nuclear family ideology is viewed as culturally valid by the life story writers. The content of familialism might shift to include individualistic traces, but nevertheless, the fears of the crumbling family or ideology of familialism seem unfounded, at least in Finland.
The life stories show, as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1996, 25) have proposed, that detraditionalization does not entail that individuals live in a vacuum, since even in contemporary societies regulations continue to exist. What is new, is that "individuals must, in part, supply them [regulations] for themselves, import them into their biographies through their own actions" (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1996, 25). It is significant that the life story writers in the present study have imported rather traditional ideals about motherhood and family into their own biographies.
There are traces of the pure relationship in how the life story writers
view their marital relationships, but these are in most cases overridden
by traditional constraints when it comes to the question of divorce. Such
traditional beliefs are, for instance, that children should grow up with
two parents, and that a mother's priority must be the well-being of her
children. While the marital relationship in some life stories is described
as pure, this is not true of how the writers view their relationship with
their children. Furthermore, pure relationships do not happen in a vacuum.
In the life stories in the present study, they are embedded within a familial
framework, where other considerations, other relationships, often take
precedence. Here lies an apparent contradiction between a modern view of
adult relationships and a traditional view of parent-child relationships.
However, as Adam (1996, 142) puts it, "[i]nstead of binary thinking we
need code combinations and code syntheses, ‘neither-nor' approaches as
others; we need to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity and multiple meanings".
Rather than positioning tradition and modernity, familialism and individualsim,
as opposites, the life stories in the present study show how the pure relationship
can co-exist with traditional familial norms.
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Anna Rotkirch
University of Helsinki
anna.rotkirch@helsinki.fi
Paper presented at the 4th European Conference of Sociology, RN1
: Biographical Perspectives on European Societies. Vrije Universiteit,
Amsterdam, August 18-21, 1999.
**Preliminary version - not to be quoted without permission by the author!**
1 Discussing the margins
Workers, lyumpen and the rest
2. Postwar promiscuity
Ivanov, the taxi driver
Problems of reliability
Fallen women and social ascent
Sexual blat and prostitution
From muzhik to knight
3. Suburban gang culture
In the cellar
Attemps of social ascent
Misogyny and male bonding
4. Concluding comparisons
From culturation to blurred mobility
Milieus and subcultures
Interpretation
The reflective
Muzhik vs Love
A normal family life
Feeling
Practices
The tactile The habitual
loneliness incest, sexual blat
ambivalence escaping poverty
lack of control
In Ivanov’s class journey, social mobility was connected with rejecting
loose livings and developing "normal" family relations. The cultural clashes
between poor worker’s and middle class milieus, public Soviet institutions
and private complicated chaos resulted in feelings of loneliness, ambivalence
and lack of life control.
Maynes’ (1996) study of 19th century workers’ found a pattern
of men’s self presentation, where sexual restraint was equated with self
control and social mobility. Ivanov’s life story follows the same logic.
It also features more detailed evidence of the tension between two conceptions
of masculinity, the crude muzhik and the courteous man/knight. This
dilemma is crystallized in the notions of female breasts and milk.
In the cellar
Aleksei Lukashin, a medical student who has worked as a sound operator
in a rock band, a doctor, a masseur and nowadays in show business, was
born in 1960. Like Ivanov, he was raised by a single mother in a clearly
poor district of the city. Aleksei was the youngest of three boys. The
eldest brother moved out when Aleksei still a toddler, but he spent much
time with his middle brother. Aleksei’s school teachers are told to have
lost all hope at an early stage: the only one who really minded him not
attending classes was the sports teacher, who is described chasing him
with a basketball around the building, his eyes blood stained after Aleksei
had made a stone hid in a briefcase fall down on his head. This anecdote
says much about the social setting, as the Soviet schools of the 1970s
generally had severe discipline (*see e.g..
The young Aleksei and his friends played some sports (especially
ice hockey, but also some cross-country skiing) but mostly hang out together.
In this autobiography, there is never any hesitation about which ideal
of masculinity to follow: there is much fighting with fists, knives and
occasionally even with guns, and much laughing, drinking and dragging.
"My brothers were known (v pochete) in the whole okruga*. They fought very
well. I tried not to be worse than they were. ... When it became necessary,
I took part in the battles, when I could, I went out with them in the company
of girls." These girls - later in the text usually called ‘beauties’ (krasavitsy)
- only figure as sexual objects who circulate between the guys. It is a
muzhik’s world, where the word love is mentioned only in quotation marks
and there are no attempts at knighthood discourse, except in order to ridicule
or oppose it.
Out of straightforwardness or provocation, the text opens with
a close-up of a "meeting" many others would call a gang rape:
It happened a long time ago. It is over 20 years since. I was about
15 years old. I was a clever, quick little guy. I was physically strong,
above my age. I was friends with my classmates, but also with guys who
were 3-5 years older than me.
My first close meeting with a woman took place in a cellar. My elder
brother had brought some girl. Together with his friends we got drunk and
then everybody fucked her. Around the tenth turn was mine. I was very nervous,
standing in line. The older friends calmed and encouraged me. You won't
even have to do anything, they said. Just take off your pants... When I
went in, she was lying on the floor, smoking a cigarette. To hide my anxiety
*mandraz, I behaved rudely /naglo/ (like a big boy), and took off my pants
without a word. I firmly followed the instructions. I lied down on her.
Physically, I felt her body, and some kind of smell that was new to me.
Sensing this all so close to me lifted my worries to a qualitatively new
level. My legs started shaking. But like a bulldozer, without noticing
anything around, I acted. It was very wet in there ... After that I quickly
left and went home. At home I washed myself and went to bed. I was all
trembling of excitement. I lied just a short while. Then I jumped up, dressed
and ran to the cellar, but, alas, there was already nobody there.
This is the first episode in Lukashin’s sexual memoirs. Of the hundreds
of other sexual encounters, none is as closely described. The first time
is recalled with a strong component of vitality affects and feelings -
smells, tactile sensations, trembling. The ensuing encounters merely describe
the outlook of his female partners (often with grades/vitsord*), the positions
used and the general impressions of the conquest in question. But in many
respects the style of the cellar scene is typical for the whole text. On
the one hand, the author makes a strong effort to remember, but on the
other hand, he adopts a half-joking, anecdotal tone that often serves to
belittle the events and distances the reader from the events. The frequent
mentions of laughing - with the guys, or while first flirting with a girl
- are among the most personal and sympathetic features. Otherwise, Lukashin
clearly expects the reader to want a story of his sexual escapades, much
in the genre "Letters to the reader" in pornographic or erotic journals.
The directives provided in the autobiographical announcement (to begin
with early childhood, to write about both sex and love, to talk "like to
a close friend", and to reflect on various phenomena e.g. homosexuality
or prostitution, etc.) do not seem to have left any trace. Lukashin clearly
enjoys recalling some very successful or unusual affairs but discards others,
"I have left much out on purpose, and I think there is also much I simply
do not remember." Some experiences, such as his family relations or his
religious views, are deemed irrelevant in this context, "that is another
story". Towards the end of the text, he complains of being tired of writing
and having too little time left as his wife (or companion) will soon return,
and he does not want her to read the text.
The girl in the cellar is not described as having resisted the
boys in any way. At the same time, it is hard to imagine that any teenager
girl would of her free will participate in such a scene. She may have been
threatened in some ways, like Ivanov’s sister-in-law was forced to agree
with the argument that it would just be much worse if she did not cooperate
(see above). At the very least, the girl in the cellar had for some reasons
reached a point where she did not or could not care about her own integrity.
This is the most striking example of the moral gray zone and ambivalence
about sexual norms that were especially large during late socialism . The
Soviet statistics already indicate that sexual violence was frequently
committed by young males and that specifically group rapes by youth gangs
were more frequent than in other countries (Kon 1996). Yet we may suppose
that the events reported to the police must have been among those perceived
by all participants as more or less unequivocal violence. In addition,
there were probably many more situations akin to Lukashin’s sexual initiation,
in which neither the offenders nor the victim seem to have had clear notions
about how to name, react to, or later think about what happened. His version
is the other side of what the women autobiographers describe as foolishness,
fatal innocence, becoming paralyzed or fearing to scream (see chapter six).
These practices created intense and contradictory feelings, which
evidently found no adequate or stable frames of interpretation. This is
obvious when Lukashin tells about how he later was recognized by the girl
in the cellar. His first reaction was - "naturally" - guilt:
That was my first close meeting with a woman. By the way, she remembered
me (although it had been quite dark in the cellar). A month or two later
we met each other on the street one evening. I didn't recognize her, two
girls just asked for a cigarette and we started to talk. Then one of them
withdraw*avlägsna*, and the other suggested we go smoking in another
place - which turned out to be an attic, and even a comfortable one, it
had a sofa. We sat down, smoked, and that was when she reminded me of the
story with the cellar. I, naturally, denied it at first, but she calmed
me, saying that she had no grudges, that it was her own fault and so on,
well, and that she had liked me. I looked at her, she was about ten years
older..
This time, they had more varying and longer sex. But then this latter
sexual encounter is in retrospect - jokingly, but nevertheless - called
a rape (of himself!).
After I had been raped (as I now understand) by my brother’s girl on
the attic, my life took on different colors. I somehow changed sharply.
Something in my head awoke that drove me crazy.
Aleksei invited one girl home and forced her to undress before him
by bending her fingers so it hurt. The girl agreed, but on the condition
they would not have intercourse. After this they often met for mutual petting
and without any mentions of further persuasion by force. When Aleksei insisted
on intercourse, she promised to provide another girl for him. Indeed, after
some time a new girl appeared in their circle of friends. "I do not remember
what I told her, but relatively easy I took her to a hut on a construction
site", where the new girl "calmly lied down". Aleksei got nervous when
he discovered she was a virgin, as he did not know how to manage without
any help from his partner. Furthermore, the other guys had already formed
a line outside the hut. "It all ended so that we just got dressed
and I followed her home, which happened and still happens to me extremely
seldom."
Aleksei obviously rescued his partner from another gang rape
like the one in the cellar. His noble behavior is presented in the rhetoric
of "praising by downgrading*", stressing that he practically never followed
the golden rule No 1 of Soviet courtship: that the man should follow the
woman home (cf. family*). He also provides us with a cynical ending of
this relationship. The couple met again and managed to have intercourse,
he was confronted with her boyfriend and beat him up, after which they
had sex "a couple of times more, and then she went from hand to hand" (poshla
po rukam)*.
The list of women, types and places of sex during the next fifteen
years continues, until Lukashin at the last page a little surprisingly
declares that he is actually tired of all this, "sex has long ago lost
its actuality for me". In his mid-thirties, he has not settled in his family
life nor in his professional circles. He was at the writing moment cohabiting,
but dreaming about finding a completely "harmonical woman". He was employed
in show-business but finishing his studies on the side, hoping that "the
best is yet to come" in his life. This life phase of personal and professional
unrest may have created the need of self reflection, or at least the urge
to remember, that prompted Lukashin to write.
Although Lukashin’s social status is far from settled, his social
trajectory represents a very different pattern from that of the previous
generation. This is evident in the perceived relation between sexual restraint
and social success, as well as in his attitude towards women.
Figure **. Lower working class, 1970s
Interpretation
The reflective
Muzhik-ideal
naturalization of sex
Feeling
Practices
The tactile The habitual
lust (pohot’) forced sex,
promiscuity
physical strength drinking, dragging
laughs
In his autobiography, Lukashin presents himself as a straightforward
guy. There are seemingly few conflicts between feeling, social practices
and their interpretations. He appears a physical, active man who always
enjoys sex and more or less successfully fights his drinking. He has the
most complete realization of a macho, don juanistic muzhik ideal. In the
few reflections on sexuality, he advocates a naturalized view of sexuality
- sex is an inner core, which only artificial education or too well-behaved
women deny. This aggressive, naturalized sexual ideology also seems to
compensate for professional and personal instability and failed attempts
of social ascent. At the very end of the autobiography, more serious aspirations
surface:
I do not look at the world with wide open eyes, but I think that the
best is yet ahead. Sex has long ago lost its actuality for me, I mean that
to fuck somebody is no problem. The problem lies elsewhere. To meet a harmonically
(garmonichno slozhennaia) composed woman (physically, psychologically and
intellectually) is very hard. To keep her, after having met her, is still
harder. Usually they have way too high self esteem, demands and so on.
In my opinion, one should trust the will of the divine volja vozvyshennogo,
and if something should happen, it does, and the other way around. But
that is the theme of another essay.
Here again, the reader is reminded that Lukashin consciously follows
the genre of erotic memoirs, and hides e.g. his religious or more serious
social views. He admits to longing for a stable relationship, although
his expectations seem high enough, especially if the perfect woman should
not have high self esteem or "demands". Interestingly, Lukashin’s final
credo absolves himself - just like in Ivanov’s final justification - from
any responsibility or active agency. Where Ivanov blamed his upbringing,
in line with the dominant pedagogical ideas of his adult years, Lukashin
gives a semireligious, fatalistic solution characteristic of the Soviet
1970s and 1980s - "if something should happen, it does".
Paper for the 4th European Conference of Sociology: Will Europe work?
Amsterdam: August 18-21, 1999
Tone Schou Wetlesen
Department of Sociology and Human Geography
PB 1096, University of Oslo
0317 Oslo
Norwaye-mail: t.s.wetlesen@sosiologi.uio.no
Table 1: Education for women born 1941 and 1951 (%)
Source: Skrede 1994 (in Skrede 1999 p. 287).
1941
1951
Secondary education
25 33
Higher education 12
25
We may expect most informants in the war and prosperity project to be in the work force. In the 1990s most of the mixed generation was working, half of them on a full time basis. Women born between 1936 and 1965 contribute with approx. 35 per cent of the total family income in the most labour-intensive years according to the age of the main provider from 40 to 60 (Skrede 1999:291).
For some years Karin found comfort in prayers, a ritual that
she kept secret because of her father's atheistic attitude. Her prayers
for protection made fears and anxiety bearable. As she grew older her prayers
ended and she had to manage without the consolation she had felt in trusting
God. Her anxiety again became more acute. In periods she mostly feared
disease and illness, or it could be a horror of war that came to the forefront.
She tried to relieve herself by sharing her feelings with her father, asking
him if he believed in life after death, only to be met with an attitude
of denial and avoidance. She connects her feelings of frustration at this
point to the decisive steps she took as an adult:
There was no consolation either
in a heavenly father or in the father on earth. I reached out for the solution
that has become most common in our times: Love. My anguish went as a homeless
cat from one man's stairs to another ( p.85).
She bears the fate and misfortune of her parents also after they
are dead. She feels that her mother's need for protection colonises her
and makes her less responsive to the helplessness of her own children (p.
98). She compares herself to a Chinese box that keeps the helpless mother
inside her, who again carries her helpless mother within her. There are
too many children with unmet needs, and Karin lacks the strength to care
for all of them.
Karin's family story is a story about life's major dramas: Love,
violence, war, poverty, and social degradation. In spite of this Karin
describes her story as a story where nothing really happened. The war interrupts
and postpones. Karin's story exemplifies those who survived but who were
never able to catch up. Karin - belonging to the war generation - has also
paid a price for her parent's lost years on a psychological and emotional
level. In spite of this she has been able to use her talents and to achieve
a position in society that her parents could only dream of.
University of Bremen
Special Research Centre 186
Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course
(in cooperation with Faith Dasko)
University of Bremen
Special Research Centre 186
Wiener Straße / FVG-West
Postfach 30 04 40
28334 Bremen
Germany
Tel.: 49 / (0)421 / 218-4145
Fax: 49 / (0)421 / 218-4153
email: ostruck@sfb186.uni-bremen.de
This paper was submitted to the 4th European Sociological Association
Conference
"Will Europe Work?", Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
August 18-21, 1999.
In this model against the background of their respective frames, i.e.
the structure of relevance which was generated in the process of interaction,
actors perceive the range of options with respect to their occupational
and private lives. They then choose a dominant goal and a means to this
end in the form of framing on the basis of their frames and habits as well
as their social, economic and cultural resources. Decisions are thus made
on the basis of related experiences and transmitted into action.
At the same time, looking at the dynamic process of societal change,
concrete questions follow from these theoretical considerations:
First, how have the structures of resources available to East Germans
for everyday life changed?
Second, have frames, i.e. the interactively gained cognition of a situation,
changed?
Third, have habitual dispositions changed or have they remained stable
over time and thus continue to direct individual strategies in relation
to general practices even if these no longer suit a changed environment?
And, finally, this question is of interest in connection with our general
topic "generation and change", do frames and habits remain stable across
cohorts or do particular elements of actions related to biographical events
change so that one can, on the basis of substantive grounds, speak of a
process of generation formation "in the mainstream of societal events",
as put by Mannheim (1978: 39)?
Becker, Henk A. (1989): Generation, Handlungsspielräume und
Generationspolitik. In: Weymann, Angar (Hrsg.): Handlungsspielräume.
Stuttgart: Enke: 76-89
Berger, Peter L. / Luckmann, Thomas (1969): Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion
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4th European Conference of Sociology
August 18-21, 1999, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Research network Biographical Perspective on European Societies. Session
2.
This paper is devoted to the analysis of the scripts of women’s sexual behavior in Russian society, which are reconstructed on the basis of the biographical interviews with 25 middle-class women of three generations (Finnish-Russian project, 1996-1997).
The following issues are raised here:
(1) Methodology. The script approach as a methodology of social constructivism
research of sexuality.
(2) Ideal types of sexual scripts represented in women’s sexual
biographies.
(3) The script of sexual pleasure as the special way of construction
of sexuality. The process of doing gender in this sexual script.
In this paper the concept of ‘script’ is applied to the analysis
of the social construction of women’s sexual biographies.
Methodological approach of social constructivism is based on the following
assumptions:
- The way we study the world is determined by certain concepts, categories
and methods
- The concepts and categories we use vary considerably in their meanings
across cultures and time
- Descriptions and explanations of the world are themselves forms of
social action
Social constructivist approach has been applied to the research of sexuality
since 70es (Gagnon and Simon, 1973). Sexuality is looked upon as a cultural
construct (a set of learned behavior patterns).
The theory of scripts has been applied to the research on sexuality
in the Western sociology and psychology from the 70-es. Scripts are considered
as trajectories of sexual life course. According to Laumann, Gangon,
Michael and Michael (1994) scripting theory is applied for the explanation
of how sexual scripts specify with whom people have sex, when and where
they should have sex, what they should do sexually, and why they should
do sexual things (p.4). They argue that socio-cultural processes play a
fundamental role in determining of what is perceived to be "sexual" and
how sexuality is constructed and interpreted. Patterns of sexual conduct
are assumed to be culturally determined. Individual scripts (as presented
by informers) are looked upon as the cases of implementation of cultural
instructions.
Sexual script approach is the variant of social constructivism
within the framework of research on sexuality. Cultural scenarios are consider
to be the instructions for sexual and other conducts that are embedded
in the cultural narratives that are provided as guides or instructions
for all conducts. Mainly this approach is applied to the analysis of sexual
practices in the special order in different generations and different strata.
The less attention is given to the meanings of sexual behavior, which influence
the script’s construction.
I assume that cultural meaning of sexual behavior (appropriate for
a milieu, generation, age, status, and gender) frames the personal story
about sexual life. This meaning might change during life course; it needs
justifications and explanations. A person categorizes sexual experience
using available cultural instruments. Biographical data gives the possibilities
to analyze what are these categories, through which sexuality is constructed
in personal narratives.
This implies the analysis of the categories, in which a person describes
sexual experience, and the analysis of the instruments, which are used
for this categorization (procedures of comparison, opposition, and moral
approval). Silverman’s method of Membership categorization (adaptation
of Sack’s method) is used for text analysis (Silverman, 1997).
For this purpose: 1. ideal types of scripts are being explored, 2.
categorization work is analyzed in application to narratives, where sex
is constructed in the sense of "pleasure", 3. gender construction is looked
upon as the instrument for the interpretation of sexuality. Different sexual
scripts both express and construct gender culture, which is presented by
respondents in the narratives about appropriated gender behavior, gender
norms, and gender expectations.
The empirical data. For this analysis were used biographical interviews
with 18 middle-class woman (all elder than 27 years; 6 biographies – 57-63
years, 7 – 39-48 years and 5 – 27-34 years). Interviews include the following
issues: childhood, adolescence, sexual debut, marriage, and divorce, parallel
relationships, relationship with steady partner(s). Questions about sex
talk with partner, about love and jealousy, about youth sexual experiences,
about violent sex, about contraception, childbirth and abortion, about
sexual transmitted diseases were raised.
I distinguish the following ideal types of sexual scripts of the
Russian middle-class women.
1) The script of "pronatal sexuality": sexual life is described as
reproductive/family life,
2) The romantic script: sexual life as expression of emotions and feelings
(first of all love),
3) The script of sexual pleasure: sexual life oriented toward sexual
pleasure,
4) The script of communicative sex: sexual life as the way of informal
(or intellectual, or friendly) communication.
The ideal types of scripts were reconstructed on the basis of empirical
material. Different scripts can be found in the same life-story at the
different stages of one’s life cycle or in different sexual relationships.
I assume that stories about sexual practices in a narrative are organized
according to the meaning of sex. Ideal types of scripts differ according
to the meaning of the following issues:
n About what this story generally is?
n How the lose of virginity (and/or sexual debut) is described?
n How preferences in sexual relations are described?
n Who is the partner?
n Which kind of sexual relationships are the most widespread?
n On what depend sexual pleasure and satisfaction?
n How sexual practices are described?
n What categories are used in the sexual vocabulary?
After the analysis of different scripts I will explore the systems
of references and categorization in one special kind of script to analyze
how "real" script is constructed.
n Script "Pronatal sexuality".
How this story is constructed? Which categories are used?
This story is about couple relationships, mainly about marriage. It
includes the following issues:
1) Lack of sex education and romantic love as a first sub-sexual experience
2) Acquaintance with husband, sexual debut with him
3) Marriage shapes sexual life
4) A partner is a husband
5) Sexual life is the synonym of marriage, it is described as relationships
with husband, this is a story about childbirth and abortions
6) Difficulties in discussing of sexuality and problematising of sexual
satisfaction are often mentioned
7) Sexual practices are mostly not described at all.
Sex is combined with reproduction and marriage. It is described as monotonous, routine and unsatisfactory.
"Sexual life was defective, but I got used to it"
n Romantic script. "Sex is the instrument of love".
How this story is constructed? Sex is constructed as the way of love,
it is described as an attribute of "love", "amorousness". Narrative is
constructed as the series of romantic and emotional stories. Sex story
is the story of emotions and not of the technique. Sex is a by-product
of feelings. Love is the basic category in the sex vocabulary, through
which reflexive project (Giddens, 1992) of self is organized.
This is a story about
1) Romantic amorousness
2) Sex debut in love
3) Love feeling as the main reason to have sexual relationships
(in marriage or in extramarital relationship)
4) A partner is a lover
5) Steady relationships with a lover
6) Sexual pleasure and satisfaction depend on feelings and emotions
7) Sexual practices are described with some constrains
and difficulties
"Sex is the consequence of feelings and the instrument of love. You
have sex if you have attachment to a person"
n Script of communicative sex.
In this script sex is described through the category of "communication".
Sex is interpreted as an instrument to show respect and friendship and
to express commonality of interest. It is typical for certain milieu where
you also encounter the stories of group sex or changing partners.
This is a story about
1) Friendship and common interests
2) The lost of virginity "happened for company", childbirth
also "took place for company"
3) Common interests are the main reason to have sexual relationship
(in marriage or in extramarital relationships), this interests are rooted
in a joint work or milieu
4) Partner is a friend. A lot of irony is used for labeling a
partner - he is a "human being", "boy", "heroic lover", "cavalier",
etc. Communication, negotiation and talk are the most important in
the relationships: "my sexual preferences depend on my interests, in addition
to common interests, this is another language for already existing relationships".
Partner belongs to the same milieu. Sex is a subject for discussion with
partner
5) Sexual relationships are described as a series of marital,
extramarital or parallel relations, both steady and casual
6) Sexual pleasure and satisfaction are described as the object
of negotiation
7) Sexual practices are widely described, but mostly as direct
response for the questions of interviewer
"Understanding", "common interests", "language", "personal relationship" are the main categories in the sexual vocabulary.
"Sexuality exists since it exists in language. We are getting closer to each other not in order to have orgasm, but in order to talk and communicate". "We do sex to talk"
n Sex as pleasure.
Sex is being described as autonomous sphere of life. Autonomous sex
is considered to be natural drive and expression of personality. Sex is
distinguished from love, marriage, and reproduction. A story includes detailed
description of sexual technique. "I believe I was born with sexual feelings".
This is a story about
1) Sexual feelings, sexual practices and sexual technique
2) Sexual feeling are described since childhood, virginity is
seen as something that one should get rid of as soon as possible,
it might be lost with casual partner
3) The main reason to have sexual relationships is "to give pleasure
and to take pleasure", they are compatible with the satisfaction of hunger
or appetite; sexual relationship is a "play" or an "art"
4) Partner is a sexual partner, boyfriend, or a casual partner.
Sex is a subject for discussion
5) Sexual relationships are separated from marriage and love,
they are described as a series of parallel relations, including lesbian
sex and group sex
6) Sexual satisfaction is the immanent feature of sex
7) Sexual practices and technique are described in details.
The main categories in the sexual vocabulary are those which directly describe sexual practices.
"I decide not to confuse sex and love… I can have sex with a person
whom I have no feelings". ‘"Sex is the greatest pleasure given to human
being by nature"
These frames don’t embrace all the possibilities of interpretation of
sexual conduct. Other kinds of interpretation could be also found in the
texts. For example, sex as "status achievement", "self-realization", "material
support", "for the need of the health", but they are rarely presented as
integral narrative. "Violence" is another important problem in a sexual
life, but it could be looked upon as the project organizing the whole life.
Ideal types of script are very rarely completely represented in a concrete
biography. Frames are being changed during the life course; the existence
of different frames of interpretations creates the system of references,
in comparison and opposition to which the moral approval of sexual behavior
is constructed.
Further on I will give the analysis of sexual biographies, which
include narratives of autonomous sphere of sex-pleasure and give to it
special meanings. No biography is organized as the project of implementation
sexual behavior as "pure" pleasure (in comparison with "pure" pronatal,
romantic and communicative scripts). This kind of sex is always described
in comparison with another meanings of sexual conduct.
The task here is to uncover the systems of reference for the description
of sex-pleasure. These systems include sex education and sex initiation,
sexual relationships, preceding attitudes of informants and her partners.
Implicit and explicit comparison and opposition of different sexual meanings
in different relationships create the system of classification (distinction).
Differentiation of sexual meanings and it’s "cultural classification" is
implemented through conscious reflection. The own version of reality is
constructed through it.
How do "sex-pleasure" become the autonomous sphere of life? How this
distinction is carried out? Most stories present the combination "sex-love-marriage
(steady relationships)" as the ideal composition of sexual relationships.
Such combination serves as the main system of reference, presuming moral
justification of autonomous sphere of sex.
Further on I will consequently define the systems of reference, the
classifications of sex meanings and its moral approval, the re-interpretation
of gender as part of such moral approval. Three cases will be analyzed
in details.
Let me also remark that lack of sexual satisfaction and sexual pleasure
are mentioned in relationships during the whole life in several biographies
of the same generation (27-48 years) and in majority of biographies of
the eldest generation (57-63 years). These biographies are about marriages,
love, and relationships. Sexual pleasure is a problematic phenomenon in
a female biography.
"In a life course I have more and more casual sexual encounters.
"
M. was married, during the marriage and after she has parallel relationships,
both steady and casual. At present she characterizes her orientation as
striving for sexual pleasure in multiple relationship. Let us look how
this script is constructed.
What does sex-pleasure mean in this case? Two variants of interpretation
are given:
1. It is a component of "true love", "passion", or "madness love affair".
This is a harmony and liberation in unique personal relationships
2. It is a technical, "simple, good, easy" sex; it is enough "to fancy
each other" and to love each other’s body
Second variant is being separated from
1. "True love", love feelings, common interests, and intimacy. "Such
a love is happened not more than 2-3 time in life"
2. Marriage as a "complicated system of financial, material, moral,
kinship relationships, which also includes problems of housing, aging,
health"
These distinctions are made through categorization of different attitudes
in different relationships with partners, through its comparison and opposition.
The informant refers to sexual education in the parental family
as to the important context. She connects sex problems in marriage with
lack of sexual education. In her story she often mentions the lack of sexual
education and her further behavior is described as the pattern to overcome
this problem.
She reproduces her youth recollections in double sense. From one side,
she took sex as something "indecent", "non-understandable"
and "dangerous". "I had fantastic views in my youth. When I was 19,
after petting I was thinking about pregnancy". She explains this as the
consequence of upbringing. "Nobody told me anything" and stresses the lack
of knowledge and understanding.
From the other side she characterizes the atmosphere in the parental
family as the atmosphere of love and intimacy. This was the basis for the
idea that wife and husband are happy in sex. She expected happy sexual
life in marriage and oriented herself towards having sex in marriage.
Main categories which are opposed in her further life course are the
following "lack of knowledge" and "orientation toward having sex in a marriage’’.
Biography is constructed as the process of improving of her own sexual
experience and as the process of separation sex from marriage.
The second system of reference is her marriage in the age of 21. Marriage
script represents traditional variant of sexuality (pronatal script). The
following descriptions are given.
First sexual contact happened with husband. Husband is characterized
as "honest good person" and "intelligent" to whom she has had respect without
love and sexual attraction. She was not happy in sexual life with her husband.
She explains this by her and his attitudes toward sex, by lack of experience
and knowledge. Husband is characterized as non-experienced person "without
culture of sexual communication", that means he treated sex as "satisfaction
of needs like hunger, thirst". "I felt sex was indecent, he that it was
harmful". Her marriage is described as lack of love and sexual satisfaction.
A person, " whom she respects" is distinguished from a person, " whom she
loves and/or sexually desires". Difference between sex-communication-love-marriage
is formulated referring to marital experience.
Second opposition is based on gender relations in marriage. She described
husband’s feeling as "typical male", which are oriented toward conquer
of women, that is to make wife belong to him and to treat her as a property.
These gender views are also the subject of overcoming throughout informant’s
life. She refuses from the position of belonging and orients herself towards
egalitarian choice, and even towards the training of "sexually inexperienced
man". Opposition between "belonging to man" and "free choice" is formulated.
Next system of reference is the relationship with her fist lover (extramarital,
after 5 years of marriage, for several years), to whom she had the "strong
passion". She compares this relationship with marriage in three dimensions.
First, this relationship is evaluated as love, "passion"; they are
based on common interests.
Secondly, there was strong sexual attraction, desire and strong jealousy.
Thirdly, there was no such personal relationship ("such respect") as
with husband. These relations are described as a process of learning sex.
"Due to him I understood what sex was".
Therefore love, passion and sex are separated from friendly personal
relationships and marriage. These relationships are not only compared with
previous one (marriage), but also with posterior one. Here she described
herself as passive, learning, then – as active in relations and free in
choice and training partners by herself.
The life after 33 (after divorce) is described as "strange" or "different"
one with casual, permanent and temporary relationships. This period, characterized
as sexually satisfactory, is opposed to previous one. Relationships with
two steady lovers are interpreted using the previous categories. The development
of sexual relations is shown in this period.
Relationships with first lover after divorce lasted 8 years. These
were rare dates considered as a "holiday occasion". Context includes status
of partner (married person, who was not going to divorce) and her own status
(single mother living with son, without condition for dating). Relations
developed from love to a habit in the contextual condition of limited choice.
Later on casual relations began to occur, which is explained by growing
son. This justification is connected with the concept of "moral motherhood".
Relationship with the next lover, which lasted 2,5 years, is described
as "strong love and passion". This was "harmony", "perfection" in sexual
relationships with "mutual sexual abilities and skills". "Complex of inferiority
was overcome". Relation to the body was changed. At that time "I did not
need any other partners". Narrative about this partner is very short; there
is no explanation of ending of these relationships. This was the only relationship
about which the informant did not feel like giving details. "I know what
I did for him, but I don’t want to speak about it".
Relationship, which unites love and sexual satisfaction, is the basic
system of reference. They are compared with previous and following ones.
In other cases the lack of love is approved by the assertion of possibility
of separation of sex from love.
The connection between different periods is also explicitly mentioned.
Casual relationships began when "I recovered from being sick after divorce"
and then after despair in love affair. "I was physically sick, and one
my friend, psychotherapist told that I should immediately have sexual contacts…
And I did it". This happened after 40.
Contemporary relationships are described referring to previously constructed
system of categories.
First, they are separated from love (differ from relations with lovers,
where love exists). "I used to be a very romantic person, I thought that
love and sex were the same things". Sympathy is enough for sexual
contacts.
Secondly, they are separated from "complicated system of marriage"
(differ from her own marriage and from "genetic" marriage).
Thirdly, they are not based on common interests, common views and intimacy
(differ from her own marriage and relationships with lovers, which were
based on common interests).
Fourthly, they presuppose experience, abilities, skills, high developed
technique of sexual practices used in sexual contacts (differ from her
marriage and similar to relationships with her last lover). Female sexual
satisfaction derives from training and becomes "mechanical experience".
She trains men in the situation of the lack of such skills (differ
from the situation in which she was taught). These men are evaluated as
"helplessness in sexual life", their attitudes towards sex are "terrible"
(similar to her husband and herself in youth).
Man as a teacher (first lover) turns into a partner in training (last
lover) and then into a learner. This man "has no idea about his abilities",
and "hesitates to speak about sex". He has "complexes and fears", "feels
shy about his and her bodies", his "sensuality is not developed", he could
not "have joy and pleasure from sex", and can not "give pleasure to a woman".
These men are "shy and vulnerable".
What kind of woman can teach sex? Informant compares her abilities
with her own early experience and with other women. She has no feeling
of property, no jealousy, she has feeling of superior in sex, she has a
good knowledge of her own body, she expresses respect to wives and mistresses,
she has no financial problems (working now in business), she has an experience,
which younger women usually has not. She makes her own choice in sex contacts
and she "teaches all of them". All these features distinct her from her
early life.
Sexual relationships could lead to "strong feeling and love". "It is
desirable to have love and sex. But this is not what happens every time".
Sexual relationships oriented toward autonomous sexual pleasure are
connected with experience, knowledge (learning), status, and age. Own and
partner’s attitudes depend on the parameterizes, which are formulated as
the opposition to early attitudes, lack of experience and knowledge. The
development of sexual relationship is described through this opposition
by the learning process.
Doing gender.
Patterns of female behavior change in course of life story. Early period
is characterized by the male activity (active man and passive woman) and
by the lack of experience, next period is connected with own activity and
developing abilities. From a learner she became a teacher. Relationships
with men are based on the principle "she is a teacher" or partners are
equal in their experience. These features distinct informant from other
women (she tells about her superiority). She characterized herself as Other.
She is the Other compare with her own youth, with parents, with young women,
with women without experience, and with those who doesn’t develop their
sexuality.
What references help her to construct "Otherness"? She implements those
types of behavior, which she considers to be male. She argues that there
is a difference in female and male attitudes toward sex. "Men realizes
himself in sex, for women this is not necessary, for her it is enough to
be fancied". "There is no necessity for women to have multiple partners,
but men need it". She (even not explicitly) follows the patterns of behavior
which is considered by her to be male. She became Other due to interiorization
of male norms.
Informant distinguishes her from her own youth, and from another women,
using some patterns of male behavior in order to justify sex - pleasure
as autonomous sphere of life. Sexuality is explicitly described as cultural
construction.
"Sex is a greatest pleasure given to a person by nature"
S. was married, during and after marriage has had parallel steady and
casual relationships. She divorced and now has numerous sexual contacts.
How is sexual script constructed in this case?
What does sex-pleasure mean?
1. It opposes to sex which is "shame obligation in marriage" and which
is "not important and secondary"
2. It is separated from love relationships.
3. It is separated from paid sex
These distinctions are made through comparison and opposition of different
attitudes in different relationships with the reference to certain contexts.
S. describes relationships with husband, lovers, casual and steady
partners. The following types of relations are mentioned: marriage, love,
passion, paid sex, sex as joy, lesbian sex, group sex.
First important context to which informant addresses, is the sexual
education in the parental family and youth sexual feelings and experiences.
She represents her sexuality as existing "from the birth". "I knew everything
throughout all my life, I was born with sexual feelings". She describes
sexual plays, kisses, petting, necking, and oral sex in virginity. She
opposes her "natural sexuality" to parental upbringing. According to parental
attitudes she was going to lose virginity only with (future) husband in
order to have "a normal family". She evaluates parental attitudes as following:
"Sex is shame obligation in marriage". "Normal family" in her youth opinion
presupposes, first, virginity, secondly, sexual experiences.
Thus opposition is formulated which serves as a pivot for the further
interpretation of sexuality. Sexuality as an expression of nature (interpreted
as existent from the birth) is opposed to cultural limitation of it. This
interpretation then helps to separate sexuality from marriage.
The second reference system is the first experience of sexual intercourse.
She had the partner with whom she was going to marry and the partner to
whom she had strong sexual desire without intention to have couple relationship.
Sexual desire is separated from marriage in the story once again. The sexual
debut happened with the latter partner and then he became a steady partner.
"I felt in love with terrible passion". Sexual relationships are characterized
as given sexual pleasure.
In this story she continues her interpretation of sexuality: "I wasn’t
taught by anybody. I know everything by myself. Probably a woman has a
genetic sexual instinct. I don’t understand how it is possible to teach
a woman to make love ".
The former bridegroom became her second partner. The problem in sexual
debut was connected with his lack of sexual experience. Therefore debut
happened with another person. "If I knew this in advance I could help my
fiancé ".
She stresses the existence of her natural sexual ability and the lack
of sexual experience of the partner. Probably his natural abilities are
suppressed by upbringing, but she never talked about this.
When she compares first two partners (in response to the question of
interviewer) two dimensions are single out. First one is the characteristic
of personal relations. "It was interesting and lively with my fiancé."
Second dimension is sexual one. "He (bridegroom) was more loving and delicate
in sex, he felt me better, though he could have less sexual intercourse".
It is important that "he paid much more attention not to himself but to
me".
Personal relationship is being separated from sexual one. The following
categories for partners are constructed: "a person with whom it is interesting"
and "a person with whom sexual relationship are satisfactory".
Next system of reference is her marriage. Husband as well as her former
fiancé was virgin, and this "was the tragedy of our life". "He was
sexually inexperienced". A reader once again has no answer on the question:
where male skills are coming from if they are supposed to be "given by
nature"? She does not speak about this. Two assumptions could be made out
of her system of categories. First, she differs from her partners by having
sexual abilities "from the nature". This is her characteristic as well
as general characteristic of all women. Second is that her interpretation
of sexuality implicitly includes necessity of learning it (as this was
done refer to her youth) though it is explicitly denied ("I don’t understand
how it is possible to teach a woman to make love").
The relationships with the husband are described as getting worse in
personal relations ("he suppressed me morally and physically") while getting
better in sexual respect. "May be he became more experienced or our bodies
got used to each other". Sexual satisfaction was the obstacle for the divorce,
which nevertheless happened later (after 5 years of marriage).
Informant, using marriage as the system of reference, separates, first,
personal relationships from sexual ones, and secondly, natural expression
of sexuality from social experience. The second distinction is made through
detachment of her own expression of sexuality from her partners ones.
" Stormy sexual life began after the divorce". She describes herself
as "morally suppressed by her living with her husband" and "after divorce
I was surprised by expressing of sexual interest to me". Referent
in this period is her female friend who had "stormy sexual life". The friend
decided "to educate me in sexual life". This period (of sexual re-socialization)
is evaluated as a different one.
"Finally I should not deter my sexuality. All my life my sexual desire
contradicts to my education. My upbringing led me to the conclusion that
sexual desire is not normal. But then I understood that since sexuality
exists I should not struggle with it. And I stopped this struggling. It
is great that sexuality exists".
"Re-socialized" sexuality was expressed in relationships with steady
and casual lovers, in paid sex, in lesbian sex, and in sex as "adventure".
The main sense of sex is "to give and to receive pleasure". "This pleasure
is given and received on the bodily level and on the level on unconsciousness
".
What categories are used for description of sex in this period?
- paid sex – when "you do a job and think that this should be over
shortly"
- sex as pleasure, which
first, could be the obedience of hunger
secondly, could lead to steady relationship and love
In the second case the partner should be intellectual and "he should
be interesting for me". For the first case (sex as the obedience of hunger)
"it is enough to have sympathy to the partner", then body and unconsciousness
became decisive. Personal relationships and love became important in the
second case.
The following logic is constructed. Sexuality is natural drive, which gives pleasure on the level of body and unconsciousness. In this case nature is a body. Culture (the way of upbringing) suppresses sexuality bounding it with marriage. In order to "receive and give a pleasure’’ it is enough to let "body speak". There is no necessity to teach woman her sexuality. Nevertheless men and relationships suffer from the lack of experience. Learning process is necessary to get sexuality free. Love "should not be confused with sex". Love is tied with personal characteristic of the partner, which are opposed to natural and bodily ones.
Doing gender.
The separation of sex from love is described as "decision making".
"I decide not to confuse sex and love, that is not to make a mistake, which
is usually done by a woman. A man never confuse it". She decides to follow
male patterns. Thus informant distinguish herself from "genetic" woman.
She is the Other. Otherness helps her to justify sex-pleasure as autonomous
sphere. She is the Other compare with her youth, with her parents,
with other women (who confuse sex and love), and with those, who suppress
their sexuality (both women and men).
Therefore main distinction is made between those "who suppress their
sexuality" and "who get it free". It was necessary for her to make decision
to get sexuality free and to separate it from love ("as men do"). It is
also necessary to be educated in this sense. "Natural expression of sexuality"
became cultural construction.
She represents her contemporary sexual behavior as active decision
and choice making process. This sex is "the art".
Let me make the conclusion from these two cases.
Interpretation of sex as pleasure includes the following opposition:
1. Such sex is opposed to upbringing and education, according to which
sex is tied exclusively with marriage. Sex is separated from marriage.
2. Such sex is separated from love. Feeling which are necessary for
having sex are different from love. Love could emerge from such feelings
and from sex, but for sex it is enough to fancy and to be fancied. It is
important to like own and partner’s body in order to have sex. Much more
characteristics are important ("common interests", "intimacy", "intelligence",
etc.) in order to fall in love.
In both cases developing of sexuality is accounted. In the first case (M.) sexuality is explicitly tied with learning process, in the second case sexuality is implicitly learned to release "suppressed sexuality". Sexual relationships, oriented toward autonomous sexual pleasure, are connected with status, age, knowledge, and experience.
Doing gender to receive pleasure from sex includes separation from certain categories of women, that is the construction of Otherness. In the first case this construction is based on turn from a learner to a teacher position in sex. In the second case male categorization of sexual types of relationships (the separation of sex from love) is interiorized. Creation of Other woman takes place in both cases. Genetic women are those who have no experience and/or whose sexuality is repressed. At the same time they ascribed themselves "typical female characteristics", as intention to be liked, to love and to be loved. Woman as category became differentiated.
Is it obligatory to construct female identity as "Otherness" to justify
sex-pleasure? Let’s look at one more case.
"Young man or woman is looking for own style, trying to understand
what is more suitable."
T. was married, during the first marriage had an experience of
faithlessness, now she is married for the second time. In-between marriages
she had different steady and casual sexual relations. How is this script
constructed?
What does sex-pleasure mean for her?
1. This is sex in happy marriage
2. This is sex as "obedience of sexual hunger"
She described relationships with first and second husbands, with casual
and steady partners. The following types of relations are single out -
love, marriage, passion, and casual sexual contacts.
Main system of reference here is second happy marriage and relationship
with the second husband (combination of love-marriage-sex as pleasure),
with which all sexual experiences are compared.
Parental education represents the first reference system. Education
is characterized in double sense. "My mother told me about (sexual experience)
in negative sense… Woman should take care about herself". This means that
she is responsible for her sexual satisfaction – man does not care about
this. From the other side this (sexual satisfaction) depend on man "who
will work on her". So in such system of categories women become responsible
for finding a man, who will take care of her. The story is about this.
Next system of reference is the first experience of sexual intercourse.
She lost virginity with first husband. She had no sexual desire and no
sexual experience. Her husband is also depicted as not experienced person.
The relationships in this marriage are described as rare and sexually unsatisfactory.
"I don’t know what was the reason – either his (low) temperament or our
inexperience". Interpretation of sexuality includes two dimensions: first,
"natural" one (high temperament is opposed to low one), secondly, cultural
or "educational" one (sexual experience is opposed to its’ lack).
Man is responsible for the quality of sexual relations and for her
image of herself. First husband "created the complex of body inferiority".
Body is important in sex, and its evaluation depends on men. Sexual relations
depend on men’s temperament and experience of both partners.
She describes the experience of faithlessness during the last period
of marriage, which she evaluates as "normal, I didn’t think I did something
bad to anybody". This marriage was generally unsatisfied. She had intention
to have only one partner for the whole life, but choice of partner was
wrong and therefore sex was separated from couple relationship.
Main system of reference is her second marriage. This is the relationship
of love and passion. It is also depicted in the category of belonging and
male responsibility. "He gives me a lot, he gives me happiness and feeling
of being loved". He is also responsible for her bodily image. "He has changed
my attitude to my body, he has continuously reminded me that I am very
beautiful woman". "He respects me, he admires me". "He always tries to
satisfy me". Belonging also leads to negative attitude toward adultery
(to compare with first marriage).
Category of sexual experience is applied to the depiction of these
relations. She and he have a rich experience (in comparison with first
marriage); this gives them the opportunity to "be attentive to sexual relations,
to discuss them". Thus sexual experience and male responsibility in couple
relationship serve as the basis for interpretation of sex as pleasure.
Comparison between two husbands includes such parameters as attitude
to the body, ability to speak about sex, presence of sexual experience
and sexual desire, possibility of adultery. Implicitly the qualities of
personal relations are compared, when man is responsible for respect and
for love. Sexual and personal dimensions are distinguished in the description
of sex relationships.
Multiple partners are mentioned in between two marriages. The reason
is double. First, "I was miserable and missed attention to me". Secondly,
"I didn’t realize myself before (first) marriage". Thus script with multiple
partners where sex is separated from love and marriage is recognized as
permissible for youth period. The experience should be obtained in youth
age. ""Young man or woman is looking for own style, trying to understand
what is more suitable." This "search" is opposed to informant’s previous
assumption "to have only one man for whole life". Sex as pleasure is placed
in the certain age.
Separation of sex and love for her has another reason. She describes
it as the "satisfaction of hunger" and as "sport". She opposed her own
views to each other. In between marriages she considered sex as "if you
feel hunger – you can have sex". Now she thinks that the only reason for
sex – is love. Therefore she reevaluates her previous opinions. "This was
necessity of love. I was looking for love".
She gives negative opinion to her behavior in between marriage. She
condemns a script with multiple partners. "I would refuse from all sexual
contacts with pleasure in order to belong to only one partner – my husband".
"I was crazy at that time". Then the question could be raised – how to
obtain experience in the situation of belonging to one person? Two possibilities
are opened – either to obtain it before (then multiple partners are permissible)
or to make men responsible for getting experience and teaching his partner.
Thus sex as separate sex (from love and marriage) is justified under
certain conditions. It is permissible for certain age and status, for those
who have no experience, and for satisfaction of sexual hunger. Reference
system for such script is favorable marriage (with love and sexual satisfaction).
Sexual experience is necessary, but it should be obtained in youth. Feelings
became the basis for sexual relations in elder age.
Doing gender.
This case shows that there is no necessity to construct "Otherness"
if there is no discrepancy between "sex-love-marriage", if autonomous sex
is limited within certain (age) period, if a man is responsible for sexual
satisfaction, and if relations with him are described in the category of
belonging. At the same time quality of sexual relations depends on experience
of both partners. This experience should be obtained in young age.
Categories include "natural" characteristics (temperament) and experience.
The main distinction is made between those "who has experience" and those
"who has not". It is possible to separate sex from love
in order to obtain experience. Cultural construction of sexuality includes
skills and abilities for which mainly man is responsible.
Sexual relationships, oriented towards autonomous sexual pleasure
according to three cases (M., S., and T.), are connected with status, age,
knowledge, and experience. At the same time their preferable type of sex
is tied with love (usually including common interests - communication)
and one partner. Preferable type is the combination of 2d-4th ideal scripts,
opposed to the first one. First script – this is the script of first marriage
and (non-) education in these cases - represents denial of sex-pleasure.
Sex could be separated from love, but the conditions for this are different
in their interpretations. Main condition is experience (its presence in
the first case and absence in the third case).
All the cases represent sexuality as the process, which is learned
during the life course through sexual experience. Parental education and
relations with husbands and steady partners are the system of reference
for construction of sexuality. Youth ideas about sexuality are reproduced
according to contemporary concept of it. Categorization of different relationships
creates different meanings of sex and bounds it with each other. Parental
attitudes, features of partners and relationships are used as categories,
in comparison and opposing to which, sexuality is constructed.
Difference could be find in the interpretation of sex as pleasure.
It is connected with different stages of life. For first case (M.) experience
come with age and give the possibility to realize sexuality in autonomous
sphere. For the second one (S.) age experience is necessary to release
"natural" sexuality. For the third case (T.) experience should be obtained
in young age.
Those informants, who account sex as autonomous sphere and take personal
responsibility for it, make reflexive work to create their Otherness in
comparison with another women and themselves. Those, who consider autonomous
sex permissible under aging condition, have no necessity to interpret herself
as Other in comparison with other women. She compares herself
just with previous experience. I should mention that three cases are hardly
enough for more generalizes conclusion.
Let me also return to the methodology of social constructivism and its’
limitations in the research of sexuality. According to my task, which is
the analysis of the meaning of sex, the dichotomy between ‘realists’ and
‘constructivists’ does not exist. The order of practices is important as
the elements of construction of different meaning of sexuality. It does
not matter whether these practices are ‘real’ or not, they are significant
for the informants in the creation of certain meaning of sex in their life
and justification of it. Reflection on sexual behavior, the analysis of
which is primary for my task, is definitely cultural construct. One could
find learning process in the background even in the reference to "natural
expression" of sexuality. Besides this the reconstruction of gender stereotypes
is also the evidence of the cultural process of the creation of sexuality.
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Communication to the 4th European Conference of Sociology
COMMUNICATION TO THE 4TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE OF SOCIOLOGY
AMSTERDAM 18 - 21 AUGUST 1999
by
GRIS UNIVERSITE DE ROUEN
76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex
e-mail : Armelle Testenoire@ac-rouen.fr
draft version
This paper is based on data from the life stories of 25 couples, aged
between 28 and 60, and coming from a variety of backgrounds from workers
to employees and intermediary professions. In all cases, both partners
had jobs and were questioned seperately, one after the other. Each person
was asked to retrace his or her professional career from the time they
started working. The accounts also touched on their private lives and the
career path of their partners.
We qualify as life stories those interviews in which a person has "
told " us about his or her experiences and, in the present case, those
pertaining to their career path. The thematic sequence of events and the
pace of the narrative is determined by the person telling the story. The
circumstances of the interview can be seen as a public presentation of
themselves which produces special effects. The peculiarity of this kind
of story lies in the form of narrative and the fact that it is a reconstruction
of events, as filtered through memory. All the stories told are thus a
selection of the truth by which an individual in retrospect interprets
his or her path. The criticism often made of this form of information gathering
is that it overrates coherence (Bourdieu, 1986), by organising life according
to guiding thread. From this viewpoint, the interview results in an artificial
creation of meaning.
However, the stories collected are not all arranged in a coherent order.
Some people see their career paths as having happened purely by chance,
while others describe their trajectories as coherent projects.
But can we say that the way in which a person describes his or her
path is pure subjective expression? We put forward the hypothesis that
presenting one’s career path either as the product of fate or the result
of considered planning, depends on the person’s practical situation. And
here we will concentrate on gender differences. In particular, doesn’t
the difference between the way men and women integrate professionally create
a specific type of relationship with their career paths, which is revealed
in their life stories? Comparing the accounts of Paul and Jeanne L.
will serve as a starting point for reflecting on how gender can influence
the subjective relationship to professional trajectories (1).
There are different ways of reconstructing events, but these aren’t endless. The stories are structured around a certain number of decisive incidents which A. Strauss calls « critical moments » (Strauss, 1992). At these times, there is a shift in the course of events, a change in identity. Comparing the stories of the couples revealed a common chronology, a « hard core » (Pollak, 1986) which made up the framework of their story. We describe this « hard core » as the historical truth. Of course things are left out, but elements of the story added by the other partner limits the extent of this. However, despite similarities in the chronology of the two life stories, Paul and Jeanne L. interpret the events differently.
Fifty-year-old Paul L., reconstructs his professional career. In doing
so, he tries to order events around a coherent project he says has guided
his working life. This coherence which he tries to reconstruct retrospectively
is seen clearly in the continuity he describes (albeit that this appears
somewhat artificial to an outside observer) between his job as a turner
making prototypes (qualified labourer) and his later work as a social worker.
« The shaping I had to do on the lathe, there’s a kind of parallel
between that and my last job as a social worker. We tried to mould people
so that they could get jobs. It was also a sort of shaping of something
! »
Likewise, the fact that he was hired as a docker at Rouen harbour was,
for him, linked to the volunteer work he did in his neighbourhood. «
It was to build a bit on my position at C. A lot of the young people’s
fathers were dockers. Being a docker was the panacea! I wanted to have
a name, and not as the priest’s friend, I wanted to be recognised for somebody.
»
During her interview, his wife, Jeanne L., presented another version
of her husband’s career. According to her, Paul’s job changes were the
result of chance happenings. Shortly after being layed off, Paul L met
up with an old friend who told him about jobs going in the harbour. He
applied and was taken on. « He took whatever he could find. It was
unthinkable for him to be out of work. » The same thing happened
when he was fired a second time. According to Jeanne, her husband’s about
turn to become a social worker was also due to circumstances : meeting
up with a friend who had become the director of an institution for handicapped
people, just at a time when he was having difficulties professionally.
Paul L. agrees with the sequence of events which resulted in him being
hired in both these cases, but interprets them in a completely different
fashion. Even if he agrees that a series of coincidences has played a role
in his career, he refuses to attribute this to chance.
The diversification of weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) increases the
probability that things can happen « by chance » and are therefore
coincidental opportunities. H Becker has noted however, that we refuse
to accept important events in our life as being the result of fate. We
chose instead to give them a rational explication (Becker, 1994). Paul
L’s professional career is one of the things he considers as important.
Therefore he recreates his career path in restrospect making each event
part of a coherent project. It’s the final point, represented by his job
as a social worker, that appears to be the goal to which all the different
stages of his life have been directed. « We were made to be social
workers ! » he concludes, even if by saying this he inverts causality
: the present determines the past. Paul L’s viewpoint functions on two
levels. The first is made up of the factual events which he has put in
chronological order, and which were confirmed by his wife. But around these
facts there’s the interpretation of his career path, which forms the second
level of the story. This fits into a cumulative and linear temporality,
the events follow on from each other in a logical order.
While he presents himself as an instinctive person and a « go-getter
» during his story he feels the need to rationalise, to give some
kind of meaning to his professional life.
For his wife, Jeanne, it’s their private life and in particular their
life as a couple, which is presented as being a coherent project. She has
the feeling that her life with Paul has been directed at a definite goal
(symbolised by the construction of the couple), while she sees her career
as the result of a series of coincidences. « No, career-wise it was
just different opportunities, I never thought about following a specific
path. But on the level of my personal life, my family, my husband, it was
more like that. It was thought out. »
Jeanne L’s father, who was an unskilled worker, took that each of his seven children, including his daughters, had a profession. After qualifying as a cutter, Jeanne worked in the clothing industry for 18 years before she followed her husband and became a social worker. It becomes clear that her career path has far surpassed the expectations she had when she was young. At the most, she’d hoped to reach a post as head of the workroom. Unlike her husband, she sees the different stages of her working life as been discontinuous and the result of chance. However, objectively, her change to the profession of social worker is not the result of a chance meeting but due to the persuasive force of her husband. The only directing force she sees in her life is that of her marriage. On this level she too inverts causality : her current married state has oriented (a posteriori of course) the past. With regards to her couple, she feels that she has been in control of her life and has directed it with an object in mind, a feeling she does not have in relation to her career.
The difference between the two about which part of their lives, professional
or marital, they feel they have controlled, can be explained by the sexual
division of work within the couple. The feeling each of them expresses
in his or her own domain, that they have always followed a goal, translates
this repartition of marital objectives. Each partner has his or her own
territory in which he or she assumes the leadership and the feeling of
control.
More generally speaking, the different interpretation of their paths
expresses gender relationships with professional life, one the one hand,
and marital life on the other. It is women who most frequently express
feelings of discontinuity and contingency with regards to their professional
careers. And this gender difference is even more pronounced when the person
has a successful career. A.Strauss (Strauss, 1992) notes that feelings
of discontinuity reflect an absence of plans. People feel their life is
carried along by events which are characterised by their lack of predictability.
It’s what those interviewed mean when they speak about chance. The changes
are not seen as complying with a personal project, but as an ability to
adapt to circumstances : « I knew how to grab my chance ! »
In contrast to a project, « chance » signifies the indeterminate,
in other words that which goes against expectations stemming from first
socialization. H. Becker questions the way of thinking about « chance
». A whole range of different opportunities exist at each stage of
the life (and these are also not defined) which appear like a tree diagram.
Progress in life is neither subject to pure determinism nor is it the result
of free choice. Taking as an example a play by Max Frisch (2) , H.
Becker shows that each stage is the result of a confrontation between an
individual’s actions and that of others with whom he interacts. Becker
called this process « intercontingency » (Becker, l994).
In 1984, Ferrand observed that (Ferrand, 1984) most teenage
girls have plans for their family life, which may or may not be accompanied
by career prospectives, while boys above all have professional plans. Contrary
to girls, when teenage boys acknowledge the possiblity of a family life,
they remain vague about their future options. « In any case, the
question of a career is always more important than paternity. Professional
career comes up in the evidence (…) The division between the natural reproductive
function of women and the productive function of men is therefore very
clearly reproduced in the descriptions people give of their future and,
as we saw, features in the way in which we speak about our life projects.
» (Devereux, 1984 :118).
However, we did notice a difference between the older and younger women
questioned. For younger women, we find definite professional projects emerging
parallel to their desire for children. These plans co-exist simultaneously
in both spheres of their lives. This results in adjustments to both their
family and professional programmes, and limit their aspirations with regards
to their careers. They consequently think it’s impossible to move up quickly
in the hierarchy, to be upwardly mobile in their jobs. This is why they
put a successful career down to chance. « I would never have believed
it possible ! ». Work and a strong professional motivation, play
a second role in their stories. They put it down to an ability to grab
a lucky break.
Gender changes the relationship with a career path. Men and women put
them down to different temporalities. Men’s programmes (even if this is
developed after the fact) are in contrast to the contingency character
of women’s careers, a phenomena that is even more evident when a woman’s
careers has developed faster than that of her husband. It is almost as
if, by referring to chance, women apologize for having a career !
The way of presenting one’s life, either as a continual or discontinual
process must be seen as the object of the analysis in the sense that it
constitutes a key to understanding the path taken by a person. The way
of interpreting one’s life is not pure subjective expression, it highlights
the different relationships with the professional, and in particular with
a career. Putting events in one’s professional career down to « chance
» or describing them as discontinuous, expresses a difference with
first socialization expectations, which has been observed in women.
BEGKER H.S., 1994, « Foi por acazo », Conceptualizing
coïncidence. The sociological quaterly volume 35, number 2, p. 1183-
1194
BOURDIEU P., 1986, L'illusion biographique. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales n°62/63.
DEVREUX A-M., 1984, La parentalité dans le travail : rôles de sexe et rapports sociaux in Le sexe du travail. PUG, Grenoble.
FERRAND M., 1984, Paternité et vie professionnelle in Le sexe du travail. PUG, Grenoble.
GRANOVETTER M.S., 1973, The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, volume 78.
POLLAK M. 1986; La gestion de l'indicible. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales n°62/63.
STRAUSS A., 1992, Miroirs et masques. Métailié, Paris
Notes: 1. Paul and Jeanne L. Are both in their 50s. Their are
been married for 35 years. Both started working in the early 60s as qualified
workers (Paul was a turner and Jeanne a cutter). At 40, after holding down
various different jobs (teacher, docker, salesman..), Paul became a social
worker at an institute for handicapped people. He encouraged Jeanne to
follow him., which she did. For 10 years, Paul L. and his wife were also
volunteers in their spare time, working with young people in a poor area
of the city.
2. M.Frisch : Biography, ein Spiel, Gallimard, Paris. The «
secretary » suggests Mr Kürmann takes stock of his life and
changes what he wants to. « Just like when we go back step by step
through the major moves in a game of chess we have just lost, in the hope
of finding out if, when and how we could have played otherwise. »
(author’s remark) In this way, each stage is the result of the confrontation
between an individual’s action ant the reaction of his or her partner.
CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT SOCIAL RESEARCH
Zdravomyslova Elena,
Chikadze Elena
Paper given a the 4th European Conference of ESA, Amsterdam, August,
1999
ST.PETERSBURG
1999
One Russian - a drunkard;
Two Russians - a fight
Three Russian - a vodka waiting line.
Soviet period anecdote
INTRODUCTION
This paper contributes to the research on male drinking in contemporary
Russia, which starts to be fashionable (Lisitsyn 1990, Pokhlebkin 1991,
Zaigraev 1992, Nemtsov 1995, White 1996, Simpura and Levin 1997). Heavy
drinking and excessive alcohol consumption is widely reported to be typical
for the Russian everyday life. In the professional and public discussion
mostly negative consequences of the alcohol abuse are identified, those
leading to destructive social behavior, economic losses, moral degradation,
and worsening of the health of a nation.
Our approach is different. We focus our research on the rationale and
functional justification of mass excessive alcohol usage which is often
reported as one of the indicative feature of the Russian culture. We start
with the simple question: if alcohol consumption is totally negative then
why people use it - are they insane or irrational? What are the meanings
that are implied in the heavy drinking habits of Russian men? While heavy
drinking (and alcoholism) as a bio-medical-social phenomenon is a serious
and tragic problem in Russian polity, heavy drinking as a performative
/ narrative phenomenon could have diverse and conflicting meanings. It
can provide ‘endless possibilities for elaboration of ironic resistance
to the mundane, practical disciplines of family, community, and state’
(Ries 1997: 69), it can be deconstructed as practice, celebrating male
identity or performed as an aspect of crisis of masculinity.
Using biographical method, we reconstruct contexts that has been
conducive to different patterns of male drinking behavior from the life-stories
of Russian drunkards. The methodology of narrative analysis proves to be
efficient in reconstruction of meanings and contexts of the contemporary
Russian drinking patterns.
The empirical study aimed at the reconstruction of (1) contexts
and (2) meanings of heavy drinking from the life-stories of Russian men.
This study contributing to the fast growing literature on Russian drinking
gives supplementary material for understanding of its cultural and social
rootedness in Russian discursive masculinity.
Research methodology. In the study we use methodology of the topical
narrative analysis of life-stories. In the course of the study thirty (30)
biographical focused interviews with heavy drinking men were carried out
. The sample was formed by the snow-ball technique. Informants were chosen
from those who agreed to discuss their personal problems of heavy
drinking with the interviewer. However the legend of the biographical interview
was more elaborate. The researchers reported that the study focus on the
patterns of masculine conduct and masculine biography in the Soviet and
post-Soviet society. This legend gave narrators opportunities to report
and justify behaviour that was not publicly approved.
Theoretical frameworks. Two major frameworks were used in the research:
(1) theory of the Russian gender system and crisis of masculinity as one
of its dimensions; (2)script theory used for the organization of narrative
analysis
Russian gender and crisis of masculinity. Gender is the category embracing
important dimension of social ststification .To understand Russian everyday
practices, including drinking, we have to consider main principles
of Russian gender system, that is the stratificational positions of men
versus women versus state. In public discourse crisis of masculinity is
presented as important feature of the late Soviet gender system. Crisis
of masculinity is a catch phrase that embraces unprivileged deprived position
of Russian men in relation to several frames of reference: (1) compared
with women; (2) compared with ideal man (Western Man, Ideal-Soviet Man,
Traditional Russian Man).
The discussion on crisis of masculinity started in Russia in the end
of the 1960s. It was actually a part of the critique of the Soviet state
and its gender policy. The thesis of disappearance of true responsible
manhood essential for democracy was a decent way to criticize the
Soviet status quo. Soviet gender construction did not give a chance to
the Western type of hegemonic masculinity in spite of the fact that it
was perceived as the ideal by many. Let’s consider some differences in
the imagery of the Soviet and modern Western models of hegemonic masculinity.
If we apply gender optics to the concept of citizenship developed by
T.H. Marshall we will see that his theory reflects human rights as men’s
rights (Marshall 1950). Marshall distinguishes three groups of citizenship
rights that were achieved in the course of modern history via the mechanism
of class struggle: civic rights, political rights and social rights. Civic
or liberal rights embrace the rights of property, and rights of self autonomy
guaranteed by law. Political rights include democratic freedoms of associations,
voting and free press. Social rights guarantee decent life quality of a
citizen. Russian Soviet society hardly provided any of these citizenship
rights. Nationalization of property made all the demands for ownership
incompatible with Socialist law and ideology, though the difference between
personal and private property was introduced in the political economy of
socialism. Rights of ownership is the corner stone of the liberalism and
they were not provided by Soviet type of citizenship. This undermined the
main precondition of the patriarchy and relevant public and private arrangements.
Submissive position of woman in Western democracies were founded on social
position of man as a major breadwinner, main agent of family ownership
and inheritance. Civic rights and duties imposed on manhood by liberal
democracy were absent in Soviet society. Thus social position of Soviet
man cannot be equated to that of bourgeois man. Soviet man did not own
property and did not have the right to manage it. This made him weak and
provided constraints to his masculinity achievement. However the idea of
hegemonic bourgeois masculinity existed in mass consciousness and provided
the frame of reference which showed that Russian man was not a successful
one, he never benefited from the true masculinity and he have always striven
to achieve it and made his best to compensate for its lack. Soviet system
was blamed for disempowerment of man as Agent, Owner, Actor.
In the public discourse the crisis of masculinity was illustrated by
psychological, medical and cultural indicators. Among medical and psychological
indicators male alcoholism and heavy drinking were considered of the utmost
importance. We also consider heavy drinking as one of the indicators of
the crisis of masculinity imagery as well as one of the practices attributive
to the true masculinity.
Another framework which was used in the study is a script theory. For
the analysis of narratives presented in the life-stories the script theory
of J. Gagnon was used. (Gagnon 1990, Temkina 1998). Stories on Russian
drinking include systems of meanings and contexts. Each of this systemic
view in drinking can be described as a script according to which the narrative
is organized. Script approach becomes popular from the 70-es. It
was developed in the research of social construction of women’s sexual
biographies. J. Gagnon distinguishes three levels of scripting which researchers
can identify within a narrative - cultural, interrelational
and personal scripts. Cultural scripts are norms and instructions that
structure individual experiences. Interrelational scripts are trajectories
of relationships as they are narrated. Personal scripts are conceived as
trajectories of one’s (sexual) life-course that orient themselves
within interrelational and cultural scripts. Using the script frame for
the analysis of life story of the drunkards we focus on the following issues:
(1) What topics and contexts are presented as meaningful for the formation
of the heavy drinking patterns; (2) How narrators interpret their drinking
life in interviews, how they reflect upon it and what justifications they
bring forward; (3) What meanings of drinking and patterns of drinking they
articulate in their life-stories. The purpose of the script analysis as
a narrative analysis is to frame heavy drinking as Russian masculine practice.
Individual scripts (as presented by narrators) are looked upon as frames
for cultural scripts. The scripts can be found in one life-story in different
stages of one’s life cycle or in different narratives.
The research does not pretend to be comprehensive. However it helps
to reconstruct the piece of mosaic made available by our field work.
The report will proceed in the following way: Presentation of a drinking
script, its justification and main practices, based on the modal
biography of the type (childhood memories and encounters with drinking
; school, adolescence drinking experiences and their contexts; professional
life; private life including family, friendships, sexuality. Interviews
covered also specific topics of everyday drinking: its schedule, drinking
preferences, hangover, drinking company and its rituals, bad and good consequences
of drinking; drinking and authorities; self-reflection on drinking.
Script 1. BOHEMIAN. Oleg
Born in 1951 (there are similar scripts of respondents born in 1945
and 1960); unfinished higher education (often University degree), single,
three times divorced, two children. Lives in a separate flat. Professional
writer, that is earns money with literary work and jouralism.
Parental family and childhood memories. Oleg was born in well-to-do
family. Both parents were educated as engineers. He was the eldest and
only boy in the family of three children. The family occupied a separate
flat, had a dacha in the one of the resort areas close to SPb.
Oleg observed that male drinking had been habitual in their
family as his father started heavy drinking during the WWII. ‘My father
died from cirrhosis of lever. From my father’s lineage everybody has been
heavy drinking, from my mother line - there is none’.. Thus he claims
for certain continuity of his drinking with the patterns of everyday-life
of the elder generation.
Political context of upbringing. Oleg claims that political situation
of the mid 1960s-1970s was a major context for his development. Though
his school years basically fell on the period of stagnation he was happy
to get into the educational institutions that followed the patterns of
Khrushchev’s liberation. As a child Oleg started to write poetry
and as a teenager entered the Youth literature club in 1965.
‘.... There still remained a small isle of freedom, a small opening.’.
Oleg counter-poses the atmosphere of this milieu with the one in his
school: ‘This was a true contrast of truth and lie, boredom and excitement,
knowledge and hypocrisy.... In this place I met the people whom I love
until now- these were the most interesting people of my life’.
In this milieu male youth friendship was one of the main attractions
of the gifted teenagers. ‘Interesting people’ of the Club became the reference
group not for Oleg alone but for many teenagers. From their practices Oleg
modeled his life. Already in this early age teenagers were introduced to
drinking by their senior comrades. He claimed that drinking was part of
the male friendship ritual – it had the meaning of the affirmation of relationship
of true male friendship.
Drinking debut. In his life-story Oleg gave three versions of his drinking
debut. One of them is a single drinking which he puts into the context
of his attraction to reading and poetry. Talant and drinking are see as
complimentary features of an artistic personality. Another two versions
are presented as celebrations of male poetical community, the first with
his friend, the second - with the elder poet- the authority for the
youth.
First time Oleg got drunk in the 8th form. He tells that it was tradition
of drinking described in Russian literature that seduced him.
‘And as always literature should be blamed for this... I went to buy
cigarettes for my grandpa and saw large, misted bottles of vermouth in
the store. At that time I read Pasternak and in one poem there was a line
about drinking vermouth... the word influenced me. The word in Pasternak
and the word in the store cellar. And thus when I collected enough money
and my parents left for some dacha place, at night I started to taste vermouth...’
The comments on the influence of literature on the drinking habits
of intelligentsia are numerous in the life-stories that we had collected.
A female narrator makes a remark: ‘It is awful what literature does to
us. Before reading Mandelshtam I drank only portwine’.
Another story connects his drinking debut with the male youth friendship.
In the age of 15 he and his younger friend K. took in two bottles of dry
wine in the Palace of Pioneers: one they drank before and the other - after
the classes in poetry. Oleg remarks that these bottles were ‘celebration
of friendship’. ’We became friends because were felt each other, we felt
that we both can talk rhymes, and our bottle was a It was a light wine...’
It was tradition in the male company of young poets and writers to
drink celebrating their community.
...Once the older member of the club who was a real authority to them
approached two guys and said... 'Where do you drink here? We answered
- up there in the toilet. So we went to the toilet. The guy who was 8 years
older, a poet from elder generation, very respectful one - takes out a
bottle and says: I am NN". This is how we got acquainted. He said: ‘Let
keep together. Read your poems’. So in this toilet we finished two bottles
of red wine, became tipsy and went to his place for the first time’
This was an initiation of life-long friendship. In this passage drinking
story is the story of the friendship and community when drinking is a rite
of inclusion.
University years. Oleg entered the philological department
of the State University in 1968. His fathers’ protection helped him to
pass entering exams. Being known to have contacts with the department authorities
he was elected the head of the Komsomol organization of the class. This
status was used for the drinking supply of the milieu. When the lacked
money for drinkis he collected Komsomol membership fees (2 kopecks per
a person monthly) and later refunded them. Oleg did not finish the University.
Couple of times after being fired he managed to get reinstated with his
relative’s help, but at the end he quitted learning anyway. In the
late 1980s he entered the Literary Institute in Moscow but then resigned
because of the new professional opportunities opened during the glasnost
reforms.
Oleg’s’ story gives important information on the locations or places
of drinking that frame this practice. People of different age and
different milieu develop different but overlapping drinking topographies
that are reflected in different scripts. Thus, for example, teenagers’
drinking, being a forbidden practice, finds its place in the male toilet
of the youth club. In general, an obvious lack of public places available
for (teenager’s) drinking was typical for Soviet drinking stories. Young
men drink in public toilets, at the stairs, in the yards - in those public
places which are observable but difficult to control. These places
provided specific drinking habitus. Youngsters usually has drunk cheap
low quality drinks, they did not appreciate the taste of alcohol but considered
only its effects, they drained at one draught often directly from the bottles
not using glasses; snacks were not often available under these conditions...
Young people and people of bohemia adapted a certain network of public
places (cafes, coffee-shops, restaurants) for their drinking. Thus, for
example, the cafe ‘Akademichka’ opened at 8 a.m. and one could buy beer
there very early in the morning. Another place of attraction was cafe ‘Saigon’,
which is given special attention in Oleg’s story. He claims that
people came to Saigon to avoid loneliness, ‘just to talk’, ‘to be in tusovka‘,
to communicate. A drinking impecunious person might be lucky to meet someone
with a bottle and it won’t cost him much to share.
In Oleg’s story habitual drinking is ascribed the meaning of friendly
communication. Giving the picture of this communication Oleg observes:
‘No week passes without 2-3 men coming with their bottle without calling
(to my place). They like to drink in my company because it is fun. They
would like to stay for several days. You know this permanent drinking -
to start today, to drink after hangover tomorrow, and to get out of zapoi
the day after tomorrow...’.
Jobs. In the age of 21 Oleg married and soon had a son. However his
life-style hardly changed. Like other people from bohemia, Oleg never worked
in the usual Soviet way...Before and after he started earning money by
literary work, Oleg worked as a watchman, assistant, technician, etc.
Legally the adult person who was not employed officially could be persecuted
for sponging. Militia several times attempted to imprison Oleg, but he
escaped, because he ‘was always lucky with people’. Friends and friend’s
friends helped him to find sinecures. He found jobs mainly through the
network of friends of his father.
The first job Oleg got in the age of 19, soon after his father’s death.
He was employed as concrete technician of the 4th rank at the brewery.
Another job was found by his father’s friend - he became a watchman
in the railway depot. ‘The most interesting thing was that he put me into
this job when there was no such a depot... once in three days I came to
this place and this was my job until I finished to pay alimony for Tolik
(his elder son). It saved me because I was called out, they (militia)
came at the night, took me there and gave the prescription... if in several
days I wouldn’t find a job I would be arrested...’
Conflicts with authorities. Drunkards often had conflicts with militia.
There were about 15 sobriety stations in the city where drunkards were
taken from the public places. They were kept there overnight and had to
pay fines for being drunk in the public places. The relevant information
was mailed to the administration of the enterprise where they worked. Administration
had to react on the paper with sanctions - either by official moral reprimand,
or by cut in wages and benefits. Thus drunkards tried to avoid sobriety
stations. For this reason Oleg preferred to drink in elite clubs, because
‘if you drink in the House of Writers or in the other elitist professional
club you mostly are not taken to the sobriety station’.
Oleg describes several sobriety station occasions. The first time it
occurred at his first job, when he was 19 years old. The rite of initiation
for a novice at ‘Krasnaja Bavaria’ brewery presumed drinking of a wineglass
of Devil, which was a dense sweet drink of 98 degrees of alcohol
which was added in drops in lemonades and good brands of beer. ‘This thing
makes one fell down, Oleg tells, and with drinking beer all the day there,
four wineglasses were enough for me’. It turned out that when the shift
ended, the militsia car (‘garbage cleaner’) came up to the brewery and
took drunken workers to a sobriety station. This is exactly what happened
to Oleg at the very first day of his work. Another sobriety station occasion
was when he swam naked and drunk in the Finish gulf with his friends, which
was considered the violation of the rules of public behaviour.
Oleg observes, ‘At the sobriety station you could meet different people,
intelligent people who did not want to sleep. I told them stories, recited
poetry, sometimes played balda, once I met there the master of sports in
chess. We drew grid and played chess there. It was always interesting,
uncommon, curious. Anyway it was an adventure’.
In Oleg’s story drinking is presented as an element and condition for
adventure. Drinking person could find him/herself in the unexpected situation
which could be exciting and fascinating.
Oleg reports also on several suicidal attempts provoked by heavy drinking
and connected with love affairs and general feeling of unhappiness. Today
he retells them as funny clown episodes.
Generally speaking, Oleg sees drinking as a positive inspiring habit
which, if excessive, could bring about bad consequences. He recollects
his attempts to withdraw from heavy drinking. He connects these attempts
with his will to creative work and attempts to be a decent family man.
‘... I became bored of drinking, I became tired of searching for this
ugly bottle, I learned how to earn for this bottle... This clown thing
is O.K., but you know it seemed that I could end my days in a ditch. And
there is something that doesn’t allow me to do this... I want something
more, something serious, and before I did not care’...
Oleg contextualizes his life story. The initial drinking of his teenage
years was coloured by the atmosphere of political liberation and
friendly communication at the Youth Literary Club. Heavy drinking of his
adulthood, contaminated with zapoi practices and cheap wine drinking, takes
place on the gloomy background of stagnation. He describes stagnation (end
of 1970s - 1980s) as time without dates. It was difficult for him to recollect
the year and the date of the event he retold. He tried to remember the
date using his calendar of his love affairs. He confessed, ‘For me
it was absolutely the same was it Andropov time or Chernenko or Brezhnev’.
Oleg’s story shows that political atmosphere of stagnation was conducive
to the Soviet bohemian drinking patterns. The Bohemian formulates the thesis
of the united cultural opposition to the Soviet way of life.
‘... We were bound together because the terrifying monster, which was
called the Soviet power, made to unite many totally different people. Some
of them even did not realize that they hated all this...’ With the
reforms of perestroika, he argues, all this commonality was broken.
Bohemian life-style was marginal to the larger Soviet society. Oleg
describes the collective feeling of euphoria, indicative for the general
atmosphere of the Bohemian communication.
‘These were people who did not belong to the Soviet institutions of
career making. This euphoria bound people together. Everything became mixed...
And these sentiments made me to make one mistake after another. I married
several times though I did not need this, vodka was overwhelming there.
It only seemed that everything was normal.... I am very grateful
to this time... but the problem was that I could not get out of this environment
because it was the totality of existence. Poetry, drinking, funny hooliganisms,
which were discussed by all the city..’.
In this story we see that bohemian life-style presumed heavy drinking
as one of the essential practices producing collective mood, alienating
its adherents from the Soviet patterns.
Euphoria of the Soviet stagnation had another peculiar feature
- it was basically regulated by non-financial means. In the stories of
Soviet drinking financial issues are hardly discussed. If specially questioned
on the topic of money for drinking purposes, our respondents reported that
money came ‘from the air’ or ‘they did not need any money’ or something
alike. This financial unconsciousness could be explained by several reasons.
One of them were low prices of the drinks in general and of cheap drinks
in particular. The second reason was that social reality was functioning
on the basis of social networks and barter exchange more that on money.
The third reason could be collective character of drinking which presumed
pooling of people’s resources which made drinking seem cheaper than it
was.
Teenagers used for drinking pocket money as well as supplies of their
parent’s bars. Adults often could drink free of charge at the working place
or in sharing contributions. We can reconstruct the usual ways to
get money for group drinking from the narratives.
‘For example, you can sit at the telephone and start calling friends
to find the one who had money. You could meet a friend and sell empty bottles
to purchase the full ones.’
There were other opportunities for a young poet to earn money: when
he lived in the dormitory of the Literary Institute in Moscow (1987-88)
he wrote love poetry for the girlfriends of non-Russian speaking
postgraduates and was paid for it... He reports:
‘And after that I lived as a king. I even went everywhere by taxi in
Moscow, though usually I came there with only 3 rubles. Everybody
was surprised’.
Oleg’s story showed that Bohemian drinking was heavily politically
conditioned. Perestroika times destroyed the Soviet Bohemian milieu. Many
former Bohemians managed to quit drinking and became oriented on professionalization,
and ‘got a lot of things to do’, as Oleg claims. In 1991 Oleg was finally
elected a member of the Union of Writers, he published two collections
of poems and became permanently engaged in professional earnings as a journalist,
a script-writer, etc.
However excessive drinking never stopped to be his habitual practice.
It only became more regulated by his working schedule and health problems.
Resume. We can easily see that Oleg poeticizes his drinking experience
giving it the meaning of the necessary accompaniment of the literary process..
Soviet Bohemian drunkards are characterized by the only partial integration
in the Soviet social structures. One can call them marginal. Though
Oleg tried the Soviet educational and Komsomol careers, he could not follow
the approved mobility lifts. Oleg constantly violated rules of the game
in the official public space. Drinking made him brave to misbehave in official
public places. He comes drunk to the university exams, he came drunk to
the practical class (he gave lessons to the school children). He violated
the rules of the private/public division in the demonstrative way and this
forced him out of the official public sphere. He became marginalized as
many others. His practices were the practices of the bohemian underclass.
In this case heavy drinking is part of the culture of the bohemian
milieu. It’s meanings are diverse, including (1) celebration of liberation,
(2) opposition to the Soviet regime, (3) celebration of male solidarity,
(4) friendship. He develops the idea of Soviet drinking imbedded in the
temporality of political context. The pratices of drinking are conditioned
by lack of drinking equipment, cheap bad quality drinks, lack of
comfortable public places for drinking, public sanctions for drunkedness
and continuity of drinking patterns across generations and milieuax.
Script 2. ETERNAL TEENAGER (Peter Pan- Kolobok). Serezha
Born in 1966, secondary education, lives with his mother and a girl
friend, no kids, now works as an apprentice of designer in the casting
workshop.
Parental family and childhood memories. Serezha was born into the family
of Soviet technical intelligentsia. Both his parents were engineers. He
is the elder brother in the family of 3 children. In his family authoritarian
patterns of rigid upbringing were used. Serezha recollected that he was
often beaten by his father.
He spent childhood in the communal flat in the new district in the
outwards of Leningrad - Veselyi Poselok. The location of his neigbohood
is famous for mischievous behaviour of youths.
Teenager’s culture in the area of Veseslyi poselok. This drinking script
is based on the teenager’s culture which is brightly presented in the narrative.
His teenage company were hooligans, as Serezha considered it more interesting
than the company of ‘good’ schoolboys. Teenager's hooliganism is a backbone
of his story.
Serezha says that in the last grades he visited school just once a
week coming two hours after classes started. They were so called street
children. Teachers let these teenagers stay at home on the occasions when
inspection came to control the school just to avoid inevitable conflicts.
Serezha gives a picturesque description of the location - Veselyi poselok
- where he lived until he finished the school .
‘The life there is like in jungles, there is housing territory ( zhilmassiv),/
marshes, woods, lakes and ducks. One could do everything there’.
In this milieu self-destructive behavioural patterns were widely and
early spread. School children breathed gasoline, in the senior classes
they drank vodka.
Drinking debut. Drinking was habitual among teenagers in this neighbourhood.
They started mostly with cheap dry wine. As there were no cultural attractions,
bars or small cafes in this area. youths drank on the stairs, in the large
territories between the houses, or just on the benches in the yards. By
the age of 13 the drinking habits as part of the street boy’s culture were
already fixed.
To celebrate the graduation from the secondary school Serezha and couple
of his friends bought 6 bottles of cheap dry red wine. One of the friends
was 3 years older. It was a typical case of the explorative youth drinking,
initiation to the world of masculinity through the older male.
Teenager's fights. Teenagers’ masculine culture of the Veselyi Poselok
was brutal and mischievous. In this milieu intellect did not count, it
even disgraced oneself, claimed Serezha. ‘It was better to know nothing
but to ride the motorcycle recklessly or to be a loud lout, or to throw
stones further than others. There could be many examples. One could get
respect only as a good fighter’. In this culture interpersonal violence
was a pattern of communication, according to which the strongest was the
leader.
In the last school grade Serezha often did not spend nights out of
home. His parents first tried to convert him, beating him and scolding,
but soon realised that it was useless.
After 10 years of comprehensive school, Serezha entered a technical
college (PTU), soon left it and never continued studies. He stayed jobless
for a certain time, having a lot of leisure time which he did not know
how to spend.
‘It is difficult to say what I was doing at that time. I just hanged
around. We hanged around in a dense way. At that time we already drunk
good. It was portwine. I had adult friends.’
Serezha’s friends were from the criminalized neighborhood. By that
time brothers of his school mates returned from prison and became group
leaders. They all were engaged in habitual excessive drinking, pouring
out wine from the tanks at the closest railroad. This was illegal and if
they would be caught they would be imprisoned. Describing these orgies,
Serezha recollects, that they drank for weeks until the wine ended up,
after that they went for another portion to the railroad tank from which
they stole another 60 litters. Days and nights were mixed. All these orgies
took place at the apartment of a friend. ‘When you awoke you saw a scoop
in the pail, so you get it, drink and sleep again’. In a month all Serezha’s
drinking friends were imprisoned. Fortunately Serezha became alienated
from this milieu as his parents moved to another part of the city. Still
the memories of the teenager culture of Veselyi poselok are very deep and
instructive for his self-understanding.
Milieu. Serezha argues, ‘I realized a lot of things important
for life - there are other people, there is another circle of interests,
... the circle where people live only by drinking... I lived in this world
and got to know how it happens. I slept in their dormitory, in one place
and in the other. And though this milieu twists one in, in general I felt
that I was not for long in this story. Probably all this pushed me out,
I just separated with my friends... It is not that personality degrades
there, personality just gets adapted to it, there is no way out.
It is a certain definite (social) position’.
Here the respondent develops the whole theory of social distinction
based on the idea of milieu. He understands the milieu - or the circle
as he calls it - as based on the peer group united by the common patterns
of behavior and common interests, heavy drinking combined with mischievous,
violent and illegal behaviour being a core activity of the neighborhood.
Every life situation Serezha reported was contaminated with drinking
story. His experience in the hospital where he got because of the an eye
trauma which he had got in the street fight (1979) was also connected with
drinking in the company of other male patients. They preferred cheap portwine
(bormotukha, as they called it).
Jobs and Working class drinking.. The working experience of a young
man looked more like leisure and drinking was part of his working pattern.
This was typical for the low paid and low qualified jobs which he occupied
(the assistant of turner, junior research fellow in the Industrial Institute,
working at home craftsman, watchman in the cChurch, designer assistant
at the private casting workshop). His jobs did not demand high qualification
and belonged to the low-paid segments of labour.
Serezha’s story includes also a script of the working class drinking
on example of his plant supervisor, V.I. His supervisor had the drinking
problem, though there were periods when he did not drink at all... V.I.
suffered from a head trauma caused by the knife wound... and periodically
had awful headaches. He had to totally restrain himself from drinking on
medical reasons, but the only possibility to weaken his headaches was to
drink 150 grams of vodka. After taking in, he felt fine for some three
hours. In three hours he badly needed another drink to calm down his headache.
When drunk, V.I. slept in the workshop and Serezha hid him with rags.
In several days his wife came after him, took him home and fixed him in
bed, giving him medcine and in a week he felt better and then did not drink
for 3-4 months. Serezha claims that V.I. was a first class specialist and
a very good person.
Military service. Serezha, belonging to the working class, went through
typical male experience of the military service (1984-1986). In the Army
during the days off he was also caught drunk several times and did not
come back to his detachment in proper time. However, he was not punished
for his misbehavior. His duty was to buy drinks for the elder soldiers.
Serezha’s experience in the army, at jobs shows lack of responsibilities,
inefficiency of social control mechanisms, lack of discipline - this
is why we call the script ‘an Eternal Teenager’ or Kolobok – who managed
to escape many committements but in every place encountered drinking patterns
and traditions.He could be engaged in drinking everywhere. It was cheap,
it was habitual, it ws part of daily schedule and not only celebration
practice and was not sanctioned enough in his case and it was not contadictory
to the virtues of a human being as he sees them.
Serezha describes one of his jobs, when after the military service
he became employed as a junior researcher in a technical institute (1986-1991).
He was often sent to the local business tours... He came to the office
which he had to control at 11 a.m. and by noon he took the train
back. He checked the technical equipment there and then drank with two
older men who worked there.
He also worked as a watchman in the Vladimirskaya Church (1993-1995).
He was fired several times for drinking on the working place and employed
again. The job of a watchman was not demanding. Eternal Teenagers, bohemians
and pensioners worked there. It was the structure of many f Soviet jobs
that made it possible to combine drinking with work. Of course not all
the jobs, but low quality, abundant jobs were like this. They were conducive
for drinking on the working place.
This was his life before 1989. Serezha claims to be apolitical, marginal
to the Soviet way of life, expresses low level of integration into the
Soviet structures. He reports his heavy drinking as a part of the escapist
mischievous practices. Depressive condition has been also part of his drinking
habits. Trying to express his disappointment and pessimism which he believed
caused self-destructive behaviour, Serezha tells:
‘When depressive condition starts - you feel that there is no way out...
and you do not know what to do that would help you immediately. What could
be the alternative. It is an endless dead-end as my friend calls it...
I feel bad because everybody thinks that everything is stupid, untalented
and the idiotism chase me. I behave like an idiot, everybody behaves like
idiot, everybody looks so ugly.... drinking and drugs seem to be
the outcomes of such a feeling’.
After the military service Serezha entered the milieu of the late Soviet
underground - hippies, people of the System, as they called themselves
(end of the 1980ies). In a way, their life style is similar to the one
described in the Bohemian script, though there are differences in the meaning
of drinking based on the attitudes to creative work. Bohemians were firmly
oriented to creative work - poetry, art, underground philosophy. They had
their ‘sense of life’, though were critical to the regime. Mostly people
of the System lacked this creativity.
In this younger generation, alcohol was often combined with drugs.
Serezha himself claimed that he could not take drugs. He smoked grass in
the company but he could easily reject it... Anyway these mostly male communities
also included drinking romantics:
‘When we met, like five of us, it appeared that one of us had money.
So we went to the grocery, bought chicken legs, then went to some abandoned
place in the backyard, made up a fire, got vodka, sat on the stones like
archaic people and made grill on a stick’.
He described his political views of the Perestroika period as anti-Soviet:
‘Certainly, mostly people were against. Against the Soviet Union, against
Gorbachev against everything. They were in favor of democracy, in favor
of drugs, alcohol, in favor of everything. People were for freedom. When
Soviet tanks entered Lithuania we decided that if they would approach Latvia,
we all would go there to defend Latvia from the Russian tanks. Everybody
was getting ready for this departure but then got drunk and nobody went
there...’
The territory of Serezha’s drinking at that time included the whole
net of small cafes. His drinking route started at the small drinking place
near the Church where they sell konjak made a broad circle in the neighbourhood,
dropping in in every drinking place.
Resume. The Kolobok script was formed by conscious and unconscious escaping
from responsibilities. He left everything - his house, his girlfriend,
the Army, school, parents... His drinking was part of these multiple
and continuous leaving or escapist strategies. Habitual Drinking made it
easier for him to reject responsibilities of adult life in Soviet and post-Soviet
society.
Serezha says, ‘There is a tendency. I can come to one place and return
from quite a different place. I can go to the bakery to buy bread and return
home in a week. The longest escape that I had was when I went for cigarettes
and returned in three months’. This life integrated heavy drinking as its
part.
Script 3 (Generic) STUDENT. Grisha
Born in 1973 in the well-off family of intelligentsia. Grisha’s mother
is a gynecologist, his stepfather is a chemical engineer. Graduated from
the University (1996); works as a teacher of history in a secondary school.
Lives with his parents and elder step-brother (born in 1971) in the centre
of the city in the separate flat.
Parental family and childhood memories. ‘I’ve never known what is material
deficiency’, says Grisha. According to his estimation, his parental family
was normal, though his father left the family pretty early (when Grisha
was 4 years old, and since then he never met him). He tells that his father
was an actor and ‘used to drink a lot’. His mother remarried when he was
10 y.o. and his stepfather became a model male figure for Grisha.
Grisha attended kindergarten in the age of 3 to 6 years old.
When seven y.o. he entered a typical working class school in the closest
neighborhood. He gives the picture of this school and location conducive
to the practices of youth mischief.
It was the neiborhood where ‘in the 3d form children start smoking,
in the fourth you realize what beer is and you understand that you like
to drink it and in the fifth class they smell the ‘glue Moment’’2 .
Smoking debut. First time Grisha and his friend tried a cigarette when
he was 6, just before his first school year. Boys collected cigarette stubs
that seemed to be pretty clean and smoked them. This was explorative smoking.
Grisha justified it by addressing the mythological image of bard Vladimir
Vysotski, in whose song there was a famous phrase about his own war-time
childhood - ‘I used to smoke stubs’. Boys wanted to have the same experience
as Vysotski had... By the fifth class he was already addict to smoking.
Peer group and teenagers’ relations.
Grisha’s account of his childhood is not joyful. He describes the same
kind of milieu that we find in the Eternal Teenager script. ‘Our class
was a very unpleasant one’, he claims. ‘It was a rabble and I did not like
it’. Crucial patterns of interaction were street fights. Physical force
was he main stratification principle.
Two schools of the region were fighting with each other. Usually these
fights occurred near metro stations. At the metro station some boy would
meet several guys in the boots who would ask him where he was from. Is
he was from the wrong school he will be beaten. Girls were never involved
in these behavioural patterns (fights, smoking, drinking). This was exclusive
pattern of the street boys’ culture.
This working class milieu and city segregation were crucial for Grisha’s
early socialization. Grisha is convinced that his neighborhood, school
and class were of classical working class origin. The destiny of hid classmates
is only logical - half of them is in prison now.
Grisha contrasted himself to the street boys patterns. He argues,
‘It is not that I felt contempt to my schoolmates because they
were hoodlums and I was so smart, handsome and good - it was different’.
He says that his alienation from his school mates originated from the difference
in their interests and tastes. ‘Simply I had very different interests.
..I really did not like their demonstrative rudeness - the way how
they held cigarettes in the teeth, (they way they addressed people: ‘give
me 20 kopecks’ - it was really cheap.. I did not like it and I never behaved
in this way myself’.
He claims that his safety was guaranteed by the fact that he was ‘more
like a home boy. I mostly stayed at home and read.’ ....
Anyway, being a boy Grisha spent a lot of time in the streets and in
the yards. This yard teenager culture was crucial for the socialization
of urban men - male culture of the working regions, with its parody on
the brutal masculinity was a prevailing model.
From this and other interviews it is easy to reconstruct this youth masculine way of life . Stories from this culture are given by almost all our respondents. They include heavy drinking, street fights and hooliganism, breaking into the other’s property place - mostly state enterprises, construction sites etc. Search for action, heroic deed, adventure and camaraderie is also a part of this culture.
Family balanced Grisha’s street life. Attractiveness of the family
and home can seen as a guarantee for the sobriety of a boy. But this is
only the beginning of the story.
His stepfather became the ideal of masculinity for him. In the story
Grisha focuses on the things that they did together, for example, playing
tennis, which was considered ‘a real style’. Grisha says, however that
his main interest was reading.
Grishas’s favourites were Russian writers Vladimir Vysotski and Sergei Dovlatov from whom he copied his imagery of true masculinity. The characters of their books were bold, intellectual drinking men full of artistic humour and feelings of camaraderie.
When he was 15, Grisha’s family moved to the centre of St.Petersburg. The change of the dwelling place totally changed Grisha’s life and his worldview. If before he had been a lonely home boy counter-posing himself to the brutal masculine environment, in the new neighborhood he at last ‘...realized what is friendship, what is it when the class is really great, when we all are together, and it is joyful and everybody is smart around’.
Grisha claims that the topography of the teenager’s culture is different
in the center and in the new regions of the town. The symbol of the center
in his view is a thorough yard which frames the practices of boys’adventures.
On the contrary, in the new suburbs the bushes and the waste lands were
determinants of the environment.
However in the center the teenagers’ brutal street life showed to be
quite similar to that in the distanced neighborhoods:
‘We were beaten in the new school by the former graduates - the gopniks...
because we were newcomers. This was quite a pattern. If you were a new
one in the environment, you should be shown your place... It was serious...Two
times beaten on my head. It was offensive.’
Seeking for the revenge in this fight Grisha started to train wrestling. Sports in his story is the part of the male culture which functions as the resource of self-defence and revenge. Grisha tells, ‘I had only one idea - to go and beat them on their heads in revenge. But later when they came to our farewell school party ...I realized that I just do not want to do it. May be it is OK that they had beaten me at that time?’
Student Life. After school in the age of 18, Grisha entered the State St.Petersburg University. This marked the beginning of his drinking experiences.
Political context and attitude (end of 1980s - beginning of the 1990s).
In Grisha’s student melieu ideology didn’t play major part, it was
fashionable to be apolitical.
‘... Old history was useless, the new one was not yet formed’. If in
the 1987 - 89 it was fashionable for young men to march in street
rallies and demonstrations, now there was obvious lack of political involvement,
even no political talks. Such an apolitical attitude makes Grisha’s script
very different from the Eternal Teenager or from the Bohemian of the 1970s.
Grisha says: ‘ We did not understand what is it (politics)… And … we
did not want to participate in it. … we perceived the state as.. some inperceivable
machinery, and it was problematic to imagine what should we do in this
(political sphere)’.
Grisha says that University was the golden age for him... He started to write poetry, play guitar and his musical tastes radically changed. ‘Before I listened to the music in the style of ‘Modern Talking’ and now I learnt what was Akvarium: ’They brought me to ‘Saigon’’
In the topography of the student drinking. The set of the city cafes
was of particular importance to maintain student milieu. Again we see in
his drinking stories Cafe ‘Saigon’ as a setting for the youth culture of
the 1980s. This place was crucial for several subcultures and several generations
of the late Soviet society. Describing this place Grisha says:
‘...We stayed there and chattered and that is it what we did there....
We drank portwine. And some man with the beard told us such cute things
about Lead Zeppelin and so forth - he was quite tipsy... he was music-crazy...’
Very soon Grisha became absorbed by Saigonean communication patterns which were richly supplied by the group portwine drinking. Older generation of Saigon milieu - people of Soviet cultural dissent of the 1970s became the reference group of Grisha. They were very similar to the characters of Vysotskii and Dovlatov, his favourite authors, who had also once belonged to this type of milieu.
Grisha continues: ‘I met ...creative bohemia, those who wrote verses... Of course, it was ugly there as I understand now, but at that time it was great. He plays a guitar, his own songs..’.
This culture presumed the practices of intellectual talk on philosophy, creative work, etc. accompanied and inspired by heavy drinking of cheap low quality Moldavian portwine. Grisha felt close to the bohemians of 1970s. We thought that Oleg (script 1) could be his tutor - his intellectual father.
At that time Grisha combined training in the Eastern fighting with readings in Dzen-Buddist philosophy. Everything was new and inspiring in the Student Life affiliated to bohemians. This was a very serious break. His first love. His first encounter with anasha. All this came in one package.
First drug. One summer day when Grisha stayed alone at home, his elder stepbrother suggested him to try anasha. First Grisha hesitated but later he felt that he should try ‘what everybody tried’.
Describing his drinking habits often accompanied not only by friendly intellectual discussion but with different forms of mischief, fighting and conflicts with militia, Grisha distinguishes the patterns of drinking behaviour, depending on the quality of drinks one takes in.
‘There is differentiation in drinks and typology of drinking - under
vodka I behave awfully. I am getting foolish, obstinate, I am transforming
into a different person, whom I don’t know. And after that they start
to blame me... Why? I don’t know this person, I see him first time in my
life’. He says that now when he wants to change his life style he will
drink only dry red wine.
Male friendship is the key value of Grisha’s student youth. He emphasizes
the fact that their company was exclusively male. Occasionally girls were
allowed, if ‘their intellect was relevant’, but mostly love affirs
did not overlap with male friendship, being ‘a parallel story’. The subcultural
practices went hand in hand with university studies, good grades, exams
where Grisha got good marks... Student brotherhood - this is the
word that Grisha uses to describe relations in the small group of male
students, to which he belonged. He developed the theory of student’s solidarity
as the one grounded on the common values and practices.
‘What bound us together? ... Of course we tried to escape craziness.
Naturally. Together. This is what seems to unite us. Because those situations
which normal people perceived as normal looked absolutely abnormal to us....
For us it was normal to go to the university roof and to drink beer or
port there... For us it was normal to go to the seminar a little bit tipsy....
This was normal. For us it was normal to sit in the library for two full
days before exams - normal...’.
The pivot of this solidarity was ‘intellectual communication on the background of the portwine’.
Justification and motivation of drinking. Grisha’s drinking has numerous meanings, most of them are positively assessed in his story.
First, he does not realize that his excessive drinking is truly self-destructive. Though all the witnesses who recommended Grisha as a respondent, claim that his alcoholism is a true threat for his personality and his environment, his drinking stories are light, easy and presented as a happy-end adventures of the growing up man. The Student’s story is full of accounts of the positive inspiring consequences of drugs and drinking. He says: ‘Drugs helped me a lot at some point. At least they helped me to get rid of them - because if it were not for smoking I could come to some bad final point.... And now it was a very normal situation. I smoked, tried different drugs and stopped it. Now I take them very seldom’.
In Grisha’s story drinking has the meaning of a resourse of intellectual and communicative liberalization and creative work. He says, ‘Drinking is necessary because a person can be a silent, but give him a glass and we start a dialogue. And everything is OK’. For him drugs and alcohol are the means of intensification of sensitivity and creativity... ‘Alcohol talk includes such expressions which lack in the normal talk’ - he argues.
Grisha also appreciates the opportunity of becoming different which is conditioned by heavy drinking. ‘... It is interesting to be different. Because everything becomes different - different thoughts, movements, view, perspective... The reality changes itself. In a certain sense this is the same as with drugs...’
He believes that drinking helps to escape from the mundane realities of the Russian everyday life which he hates. This argument gives drinking the meaning of a protest and escapism. ‘How one can love such people when 5 milliard people are doing hell knows what. Can anybody blame me of being an alcoholic under such conditions?. Are they crazy? ...I also participate in this absurd, though in a different way. I try to play craziness because when I am drunk I don’t feel ashamed...... So what? People are right to say that heavy drinking is deliberate madness’.
Another justification is simple physical relaxation that alcohol brings
about. ‘There is a great advantage of alcohol which no other drug gives,
I believe: Ii is a muscle relaxation, simple relaxation. When your muscles
are tights your perspective changes’.
The major frame of Grisha’s drinking theory is his concept of masculinity.
Below follows one of his fantasies:
‘We start with the fact that a man is a hunter, who has been always engaged in active search. It was a man who killed animals, women did not do it, did they? A man brought them, women were not warriors, men were. This was normal. Now, unfortunately, we don’t have such things as simple duels - and we start to get destroyed as men. Why? Because before it was different. You go along the street and somebody says something wrong and we can discuss this issue on swords. And now. What should one do? To fight? There’s an article in the Criminal Code prohibiting street fights. Well, it is just normal that we have a growth of the alcohol crimes in this society - there is no way to sublime. Remember, many young men of vanguard in 1914 went to the WWI - why? It was an act of self-assertion. There is no war now... Either you beat or you will be beaten. But both things you should perceive as normal... I can put someone on his proper place and someone can out me on my place. This allows me to feel my own place... and I perceive myself as a human being. Finally, as a Man.’
Crisis of primordial masculinity Grisha sees as a major condition for mass obsessive drinking of Russian men.
Inspite of his conviction in the positive aspects of alcohol consumption
Grisha feels that heavy drinking could be destructive and should be controlled.
He recollects several bad consequences of his drinking: ‘I started to forget
things, I came late, sometimes I was late for the appointments, sometimes
I never came where I should come... And finally I started to do music really
serious so I did not have time for this’. There were drunk fights with
knives, conflicts with police, they got to the sobriety station.
Excessive drinking in this passage is seen as an obstacle for
professionalisation, upward mobility and efficient communication.
At last Grisha came to the conclusion that he had to start new life
and there are new conditions which he has to write himself in. These are
the rules of the game, typical for the grown up person.
‘Before, he claims, I had not taken life seriously. I did not think
how to earn money. We just liked to fly above...’
.... Escape from drinking is seen as the outcome of the crucial changes
in his life. He become adult. Work, responsibilities typical for the grown
up person make him reassess his drinking. However he want only to control
drinking but not to quit it.
‘... I don’t want to reject drinking in principle. Another issue is
that I don’ t want to be obsessed by it...’, he says.
What prevents Grisha from heavy drinking. Grisha names several obstacles.
One of them is his girl-friend. He says: I don’t want to present myself
as a person from the herd, a freak, I don’t want her to feel me as
something unpleasant...’ Another preventive measure is provided by his
love for music : ‘If I will drink heavily I won’t be able to play music
- I love my instrument, I want to play’. Grisha says, ‘There are many things
that stop me. I cannot give up or forget my life, I cannot exchange it
for drinking...
To summarize, Grisha argues that emotional relations, professionalism
in general is worth sobriety.
However, to our knowledge, though he stopped to be a student Grisha fails to stop his habitual cyclical pratices of heavy drinking
Resume
The major frame of Grisha’s drinking script is his concept of masculinity
and life-cycle. This is why in his story he mainly focuses on the positive
aspects of drinking. His main concern is to make this habitual male practice
a regulated one.
Grisha connects drinking with student life, creative work and male
friendship. For him drinking is an inevitable part of male friendship and
one of the habits that is accompanying other activities - intellectual
talk, playing music, etc. Excessive drinking he sees as lack of regulation
of normal drinking promoted by the social conditions which he calls ‘crazy’.
We call Grisha’s script ‘Student’, because he often argues that adult (not
student life) will stop his drinking practices, typical for a young, single,
intellectual and creative - oriented youn man.
SCRIPT 4. MANUAL WORKER. Sasha
Born in 1970 in Leningrad. Education- technical high school. Machine operator, unemployed from March 1997. Divorced, 5 year old son, lives in cohabitation with a woman who has a daughter from the previous marriage.
Parental family and childhood memories. Sasha is aquainted with heavy
drinking since his early childhood, because his parents were drinking regularly.
His father was a driver, now an invalid, his mother - was a cleaner, she
died in 1992. When parents were on heavy drinking cycle he stayed at his
babushka’s place, escaping from them.
Later we’ll see the continuity in the drinking patterns of Sasha
and his parents.
School years. He entered the ordinary school in the neighborhood. His
school memories are not vivid and bright. In school he first was an excellent
pupil, later it became worse, but I never was really bad.
Sasha was known as a modest unambitious yound man. Though boy’s fighting
were typical for his milieu, he did not like to fight. He was very patient
and quite lazy, it was difficult to drive him out of his wits. It happened
only couple of times.
After the 8th grade he entered the technical high school. His class
mates organized regular trips to the countryside, but usually he did not
take part in them. He describes himself as a calm, quiet person. He had
one friend who was as quiet as he was. Life went on smoothly, no events,
no interests...
Drinking debut. First drinking he had at the last year of the technical
college together with his friend. They were in a bad mood, because they
failed to pass an exam: they drunk cheap dry wine from the bottle at the
stairs of some passage. After that Sasha went to negotiate with his teacher
about the re-examination on the subject which he had not passed. It went
normal. The teacher realizing that he was tipsy, told him to go home and
to come by next time.
The first time Sasha felt really scared by the effects of drinking
was when he mixed read wine and beer. The effect of mixed drinks in the
uncomfortable setting - in the street or in the toilet, or just in the
staires where people get drunk and urinate was a common report of the teenagers’
drinking for those young men who lived with their parents.
Heavy drinking - large portions per one intake - became a communicative
pattern between him and his friend. Every time they met, they gathered
money and bought cheap drinks... Sometimes they mixed it with beer to get
more drunk.
Jobs. By profession Sasha was a technologist but worked as a machine
operator. He did not understand a thing in the electronic equipment and
worked on the older machines. His job was of low quality. Last years
Sasha worked at the cigarette factory characterized by bad working conditions,
dust, etc. He was fired in March 1998 for stealing cigarettes from the
factory. Fortunately he managed to escape legal persecution.
At the working place people used to drink as well. It was considered
normal. The Soviet types of collectivism presumed celebrations of important
life events which were always accompanied by drinking. At the male workshops
of the industrial plants this drinks were not wine but vodka or pure spirit
which could be easily got for free from the repair shop of the enterprise.
Sasha reported that at the factory where he worked everybody was
constantly tipsy and this of course surprised him at the beginning. Later
during the Andropov’s regime (1982-1984) the supervisors started to discipline
the drinkers but it was not very efficient.
Drunk men were often taken to the sobriety stations. Sasha’s story
includes several episodes connected with sobriety stations.
A story about the sobriety station: ‘I was there only once. And, of course, I remember it very well. It happened at the plant just after we received an advance in wages. It was probably the first time when I got really heavily drunk. Being drunk already, we decided to go for smoking into our workshop. And a watchman asked for the militia.... After that we drunk heavily at a front door near metro. I showed to be the healthiest from three of us. One of the guys could not stand and fell down. I tried to raise him, at that very moment the militia car arrived - khmeleuborochnaya - and took them’. As a result one of them was beaten by the militsia men and lost all his money. Sasha believes that money was taken by militioners.
Female patronage. Sasha’s’ story is a vivid example of the dominating
of women in the everyday life of passive non-intiative men. His life was
organized by women: first babushka took care of him, later his mother arranged
his first marriage. His mother decided that he should study in the high
technical school because it was closer to their place. Later his mother
in law arranged his job at the cigarette factory: ‘It was her idea - I
did not have any acquaintances there…. I never made solutions, I just clawed.
When my mother was alive she made solutions for everybody’. Sasha explains
his submissiveness by lack of motivation. ‘I did not know what I would
like to do in my life’, he says.
Family relations. Being ‘a shy and modest young man’, Sasha started
to see girls only in the last year of his high school studies. His mother
arranged his marrage to the daughter of her work-mate. The young couple
never lived separately from the parental families- they shuttled from his
parents to hers. Sasha divorced after six years of marriage, because ‘it
just happenned’. He had got a mistress and one day decided to stay with
her. His life was eventless and uninitiative. Decisions were made by elder
women - his mother, babushka, later- his mother in law and partners. Everything
was settled for him and almost everything satisfied him.
First time after marriage when he came from work a bit earlier than
his wife which happened quite often, he went to meet her and they
had a walk, went to the theatre or to some concert. They had guests at
home. Now, he reports, with new cohabitation, it is different. Life is
boring, they mostly stay at home.
They had a stereotype of the Sunday family dinner at his mother’s in
law place. Each time when the young couple visited Marja Ivanovna (his
mother in law) on weekend she cooked a chicken and bought a bottle of vodka
- this was her friendly ritual of hospitality. This was the beginning of
his heavy drinking according to his estimation.
At the same time from his early age Sasha had quite a critical attitude
towards drinking, perceiving it as a destructive pattern of his parental
family. He also reports that when his leisure was diverse and he spent
more time out of home, heavy drinking was not his habitual leisure.
Sasha reports that in the first marriage he gave all his salary to
his wife and left only small pocket money for himself. They made purchases
together, the wife was trying to stimulate him for diverse activities.
He admits lack of personal autonomy and male domination in his first marriage:
‘Generally speaking I did not have anything of my own in this apartment
where we lived together. My mother in law lived with us. She is O.K. but
I live not in my own place so I don’t interfere in anything’.
Somehow domination of women did not satisfy him - he wanted to escape
this and was looking for the new situation when he will be the head of
the family. In his new partnership his cohabitant is even less initiative
that he. She is a typical passive submissive character. She is very seldom
out of home. Sasha keeps money and makes all the purchases himself.
His wife does not work now. Most of the time she spends in the small apartment
of theirs with her mum. Sasha reports that he would prefer her to be more
communicative - to go to see girl friends, just to go out. He retells their
talk. She says: ‘Sasha, why are you silent?’ Sasha: - What can I say? There’s
nothing to talk about’.
He is unemployed and according to his estimation: ‘… nothing happens,
I have nothing to say’. He claims that when he worked there were lively
events, something interesting happened that he could discuss at home....
‘And now we just constantly at home. Sometimes we go for a walk - we walk
in silence. I say: Why are you silent’ She answers: What should I say?.
This is why I want her to work - It is good to talk to people’.
In spite of the attitude of eventlessness that Sasha reports, we can
observe that his life is full of urgent problems. Both he and his wife
are unemployed. However, neither he nor she looks for job. Their unemployment
benefit is extremely low. The only person who works in their family
is his mother in law.
Justification and motivation of drinking in Sasha’s’ story is not sophisticated.
He drinks for relaxation, as he says. He drinks to avoid unbearable boredom
of his being. He says, ‘All my adventures take place when I am drunk. Mostly
when nobody is around I drink and go to bed. But my drinking friends they
always search for adventures’.
Resume. Sasha as a representative of manual working class people encountered
with drinking as with habitual practice everywhere- at work, at leisure
time, in holidays and in weekdays, in public and in private. They drink
for celebraton and relaxation, in grief and in happiness. They reproduce
drinking together with their social position as part of the life-style
.They usually prefer to drink cheap fortified wines, vodka, beer and drink
to get drunk. Sometimes the drinks are mixed to make them more efficient.
We have the similar stories of the working class drinking in many narratives
- ‘Bohemian’ and ‘Eternal Teenager’.
Reflecting about himself Sasha confesses - ‘I have very low activity.
I don’t want to interfere, I don’t want to be bothered. I want everything
to be quiet, and calm’.
Drinking as a substitute for other leisure activities and as a substitute
for initiative behaviour are characteristic meanings for this script.
SCRIPT 5. KOMANDOR - Polar investigator. Vlad.
Born in 1955 ; 3 times divorced, married, has a daughter of 8 y.o. PhD, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. Secondary job - watchman at the parking station, profession- polar investigator.
Parental family and the image of the father. The story of Vlad
is a story of true man, a Komandor. It also can be interpreted as the story
of a son. It means that the pivot of Vlad’s narrative is the image of
his father as a masculinity model. Vlad’s father held an important position
in the Ministry of Arctic and Antarctic. Vlad constantly refers to the
facial similarity with his father and continuities in their life
practices. Vlad was father-orientated in his school achievements, in the
choice of profession .
They were well-off family. His mother worked as accountant. They were
three chikden in the family. Until 13 y.o.the family lived in Pevek (Magadan)
which was caused by his father’s job appointment. This means that the family
life was centered around the father’s career.
Childhood memories. The important memories of Vlad’s childhood
are public baths on the ice-breaker, talk with the captain on the future
profession at the age of 6 (‘I will be like my father’) and his father’s
present given for his 12th birthday - the hunting gun. His father
introduced Vlad to the true male leisure activities that became his habitual
practices - hunting, fishing and hiking.
To conclude in the words of informer:
‘My father taught me everything: how to live in the forest having just
a rucksack, how to find some tent or abode a cottage in the forest, just
everything’... It was his father’s idea that Vlad would become a polar
explorer.
Youth. Vlad became financially independent quite early when he entered the High Marine college in Leningrad and moved to the college barracks in the age of 17 (years of studies: 1972-1977). He graduated from the same department that his father had finished and became the ocean engineer. Vlad is highly satisfied with his education because it was ‘a good school of true masculinity’. ‘This High school is a very good system for a true man, - he argues, - because expeditions... started during the school years. These expeditions were also the issue of certain cohesion: I still have a friend - we became friends in the first year of schooling. For 25 years he is my best friend since 1972’. Vlad’s concept of true masculinity includes also early independence from the parental family.
We see from this extract that Vlad believes true masculinity to be grounded on male friendship and solidarity that were trained in the High Marine College expeditions.
Vlad elaborates more about the concept of male friendship. He believes that friendship is a relationship which invokes certain rights and duties of closedness: ‘... When you feel bad, you can address only this person... And when you feel really good, you want him to come... It is (a relationship) when a person won’t betray another one’.
Another habitual practices of true masculinity that were learnt by Vlad in the Military college were sports and student raids to kolkhos. He says that in these raids he developed various skills, necessary for his future work in the Arctic – he learnt to cook, to be a brigade-leader and a commissar of the working unit.
Being a sailor in the training sea raids in the college Vlad traveled abroad which was seen as a privilege for certain professions and certain levels of well-being.
Being an articulated leader Vlad was also active in his Komsomol unit.
He graduated from the Marine college with the red diploma (with distinction).
This was his first step in the Soviet career.
Job - Professional career. After graduation he got the appointment to
the Institute of Arctic and Antarctic. In the narrative Vlad presents himself
as an extremely career oriented person. After the Marine college he continued
post-graduate studies. Soon he entered the CPSU, taking this
step as a necessary one in his strategy of Soviet career. He realized that
CPSU membership was a Soviet lift of social mobility.
His career of the Arctic explorer was smoothly developing. This profession
is considered to be a romantic male one in which no women are engaged.
His work was scheduled in a very specific way- different from the majority
of Soviet jobs.
It presumed long-term men-only expeditions to the North - winterings.
Winterings were hardly compatible with the traditional view on family life
as explorers were separated from their families for long terms. According
to Vlad’s estimation, wintering caused his first divorce.
This is how Vlad describes the criteria of recruitment for a wintering.
‘...It can be called the principle of the light end of the log... If two
men approach the log and your team-mate always take the lighter side, I’ll
never choose him for a wintering… Each person should carry a burden according
to his strength, not chosing the easiest way. This is my life principle
and I try to follow it. I can say without false modesty - I was very often
selected for winter expeditions. I spent winterings quite easily, I even
did not want to leave’.
Vlad’s narrative is full of professional pride. It is justified by his
understanding of a wintering as a test for true masculinity and true male
friendship. He claims that he successfully passed 5-6- winter terms in
the period from 1978 to 1991.
The job schedule of the wintering was very rigid. He calls it ‘sweat
labor system’. Men on wintering got specific salary benefits. In
wintering shifts one could earn twice as much as normally earned employees
of the same qualification. The general schedule was the following: 6 months’
wintering giving place to 6 months’ vocation when explorers had rest and
prepared themselves for the next wintering in the Arctic region.
In the wintering drinking was not habitual. Vlad explains this by the
hard schedule and intensive work: ‘Men did not drink there, because all
the time they had to be on guard. You are surrounded by ice which can break
any moment and the issue of survival is very important there. When ice
breaks, you should fight for survival as an ancient man - (it’s necessary)
to remove tents and houses and store, to repair things, etc.’
Another reason for wintering temperance was intensive working
schedule. ‘...One had to do all kinds of work everyday. There is no service
there. One should know how to cook, how to store ice, how to make dishes,
etc. After you make your measurement for 4 hours there are other things
to do, e.g. to unload the food, brought by the plane. This is how is rolls.’
The sobriety weekdays were followed by the holiday moderate drinking. Vlad reports that they had station holidays each ten days. On this day all the holidays were celebrated altogether and this day is fixed to a day of bath.
The consequence of such a character of work (content, conditions and scheduling) is the rigid border between the time of work in the Arctic where they followed one set of rules and the time on the mainland where the rules of conduct were different. Even more - the true masculine work (industrious and hard toil) was at the wintering and mainland- was the place for true masculine leisure. After a wintering term, men felt strong, healthy and thirsty for the experiences of male leisure, communication and sex.
Vlad’s Soviet true masculine career developed quite smoothly. The first break in this upward mobility was caused by his first divorce. His initial strategy was to finish wintering terms , to settle in St. Petersburg, to write dissertation and after that to go abroad as an expert on Polar stations, to work in UNESCO. However after the divorce he decided to start anew and left for a wintering again.
However in 1988 Vlad defended his candidate thesis and thus became the
Head of the wintering program. The work was interesting and difficult.
It was reported in the mass media, in the newspapers and on TV. Komandor
himself published articles in the newspaper. He had visiting tours to Hamburg,
Copenhagen, London etc. participating in the international conferences.
The last wintering on the Polar Station took place in 1991. Economic
breakdown made it impossible to organize expeditions any more as they were
very expensive.
Reforms were crucial for the break of the original design of the Komandor’s
prodessional career.
The beginning of 1990 became the turning point in his career. Vlad
encountered several options. He could either go into business as many of
his colleagues or stay in the scientific community. Vlad decided to continue
his scientific work and started to write his second dissertation. As the
state budget for Russian Academy is cut Vlad gets about $115 monthly
which includes his doctorate stipend and salary of the part time senior
research fellow with the addition for the candidate degree. His supplementary
job is that of a watchman at the parking station.
Vlad’s’ narration about his current job situation is full of bitterness and disappointment. The life without winterings and expeditions seems extremely boring and uninteresting for him. The only air-hope left is hunting... However, Vlad believes that ‘there is no other way in the situation of reforming society’. His hope are research grants, though he does not see them as a panacea. His former life did not know wholes in budget. Now it is different. His earnings are not enough to provide the family (His wife is unemployed and he has a small daughter, born in 1996).
Political views. Vlad is quite ambiguous in his assessment of
the Russian reforms. On the one side he supports them, on the other - he
is very critical about the social situation in Russia. ‘This could
happen only in our country. It just a delirium! – he says.
‘It is bad that economy broke down... Though I approve what had happened...
I often quarrel with my friends about this issue. I argue that before in
order to go to some Bulgaria you had to discuss something with some aunties
from the party committee who do not understand anything in life...’
Freedom is the main achievement of reforms in his view. ‘Now if you
want to go somewhere you can get a contract and job to work in Sweden.
Where could one go at the Soviet time? ... Now life is more interesting’.
However he cannot help to miss his own past. ‘I feel pity about that time. .. Because... I often went to the expeditions... and you know there were may be 4 spies on the steamboat and you are afraid to separate from the group of three.. you are scared of everything.... If something happened KGB people would shake off everybody, searching and investigation who did what... It was extremely disgusting!’
Now the next turning point of his life is close. After he finishes his
doctor thesis he will face two opportunities: first, to look for contracts
in the West, if he decides to stay in scientific sphere; second , to start
his own firm or go into somebody else’s business.
He has another argument which makes his story essentialistic in its
major frame:
‘As I am a Lion (according to Zodiac) I have difficulties to work for
someone, to be employed. I try to construct my life in such a way that
I plan everything myself and I fulfill my own plans. It is not interesting
to me to work on somebody else’s program...’
Private life, Leisure time and communication. Vlad was married four
times.
His first marriage in 1977 was a romantic love story: ‘Eerie love!’
- as he reports.
He met a girl at the beach when he visited one of the Northern towns
as a sailor and immediately she canceled her job as a guide and started
tourist tour with him in the Baltics which ended with their marriage. They
spent vacations in the prestigious resorts (‘in the Baltics or Yugoslavia)
traveling with the group of friends all over on canoe. They divorced
in a year because of her infidelity.
Vlad married the second time briefly in 1984 but they divorced
in a year. His third marriage lasted for three years in the late 1980s.
They separated, as he thinks, on her initiative as he became underpaid
and she turned into a businesswoman. He married for the fourth time in
1994 to his old girl friend, a very beautiful woman, who is also married
for the 4th time.
Housing problem is pivotal for the Vlad’s private life narrative. In his first marriage he earned enough to rent and later he was registered in his second wife’s apartment and when they divorced he left it. Between marriages he lived in his friends’ places. His third wife was also a Leningrader and she moved to her. After their divorce he managed to buy an apartment in St.Peterburg but lost it in financial breakdown.
Every time when he returned from the wintering as a prosperous attractive
young man, with lots of money and communication hunger, he came to see
friends. Coffee, Cognac and vodka were accompanying communication. They
visited restaurants and artistic clubs, performances, and theatrical
feasts, etc. ‘However it was the same all the time. Each evening the same
stories the same fun. If one comes there 5 years later - it will be still
the same - nothing will change. The same people, the same talks, homelessness
(bezbytnost) is a general feature of such communication’.
The main personal problem for him was unsettlededness… ‘When I came
home I did not feel at home... This was the reason that I was drawn out
to see people... Once I lived at my friend’s place. Then another friend
of mine helped me to rent a room. Then I lived in the student’ s dorm,
it was endless’.
We see from the Komandor’s story that housing conditions has been his
crucial problem. He never had apartment of his own and always felt homeless.
His drinking habits were partly conditioned by his unsettleness as
he stayed in artistic studios where there were people of artistic tusovka.
Drinking in this bohemian companies became his habitual practice during
holidays. He reports that he drank almost each day when he lived in the
studio and felt that he was on the edge of personal breakdown
Drinking experience.
Debut. First time he tasted wine in the 10th form of a secondary school.
It happened at the hunting with a friend some 300 km from the to town during
the school winter vacations. They had a bottle of dry wine with them. They
opened it on the Eve of the New Year.
Later hunting and drinking always went together: one liter per a person was taken for the hunting raid. ‘At night after the hunting, he says, one gets tired and you can take 50-100 grams of dissolved spirit, especially when you got wet. It is just a symbolic drinking’.
Tusovka drinking or company drinking was Vlad’s habitual experience. This is the occasion when drinking becomes excessive and heavy, coming to the practice of zapoi (drunken bout). ‘There was a moment when I was at the edge, I felt that I could fell down on the other side... But I always kept analyzing my drinking situation. How far I went in this direction? Is it still possible to withdraw, to hamper’.
Vlad is conscious of the bad consequences of drinking, he thinks that one should be careful with this habitual practice.He claims that his new family and his daughter help him to withdraw from the practices of the homeless company drinking.
Justification and motivation of drinking.
In the Komandor’s story drinking has several meanings. The crucial
frame is drinking conceived as an essential part of the male culture in
general - a ritual, a communication pattern and stress management instrument.
‘To my mind, only sick people do not drink now’, he says.
Vlad interprets heavy drinking as a drug for the treatment of psychological
breakdowns. His psychological burnouts were caused by homelessness, infidelity
of women, insufficient earnings. All these problems he conceived as crisis
of the patterns of true masculinity which he wanted to follow all his life.
He says: ‘My life does not work out smoothly. It would be different if
I had a place to live (zhilje). Everything runs into dwelling. If I would
only had a corner of mine...’
Drinking becomes excessive and self-destructive when other masculine
practices - well-paid job, independent dwelling, stable family life - are
broken. Status inconsistency is the general cause of heavy drinking and
zapoi.
‘There were times when I had bouts of heavy drinking and poured over
my grief. First time it happened when I lost my apartment - of course,
it was difficult...
The most stressful situation was when I divorced Marinka (the 3d wife)
and left... At that time our home was full equipped - we had technique
there, an auto, a cottage house... And I left with a suitcase... And I
had to start everything from zero in the age 40. It was really hard. I
drank but it was reasonable...’
Alcohol, to Komandor’s opinion has also a positive effect. It helps to relax. For example, ‘when I first time went abroad to Copenhagen ...they understood me with great difficulties... In the evening there was the opening and a banquet. And it was at this banquet after drinks that I started to talk English normally... And (since that time) when I travel abroad, I take a small bottle of vodka (Smirnovskaya) with me, and try to find a place beside some English speaking person. And I start to get into English conversation already in the plane’.
He explains Russian mass heavy drinking as imbedded in contemporary social changes... ‘It is so (people drink a lot) because the time is such. ... Sometimes I just need to drink in order to remove this feeling that I have to provide my family - and I cannot do it on the dignified level. In fact, I understand with my brains that I have a potential... and if I worked on the West and had the same status I would have had a yacht and a cottage house - I have friends in the West, I know what I am talking about. ... And why I cannot provide it here?. My friends say about me: in five minutes he will be the full doctor of sciences and he works as a watchman. Isn’t it funny?’
Resume
In Komandor’s story the crisis of masculinity is seen as a major condition
of heavy drinking. If normal, occasional, communicative drinking is seen
as part of the masculine practices, excessive drinking works as the instrument
of stress management. Rapid social changes of Russain tranformation made
Komandor to lose his opportunities to be a true man as he believes his
father was. He worked as a polar investigator, engaged in the male
profession which demanded specific male character and male skills including
resistance to difficulties, patience and ability to be a true friend. This
was the work for which a man can respect himself. It was a basis of his
high self-esteem.
Komandor’s’ excessive drinking was caused by his undrstanding that he
could not follow the ideal life-course of a true man. He did not have the
family he wanted to have, he felt homeless. This was the beginning of heavy
drinking.
Now things get worse and better at the same time. Vlad’s status drastically
changed because polar stations stopped to work. This is a typical situation
of status inconsistency which causes psychological stress and emotional
breakdown. However he feels personally happy with his wife and daughter.
‘In principle everything that I intended to do in my life - I managed
to do... But how to remove the stress?’ - this is the unanswered question
for Vlad.
SCRIPT 6. CAMERA-MAN. Dima
Born in 1945 in. Leningrad. Secondary education - 10 classes. Worked for 25 years as camera man at the Lenfilm Studio. Dissmissed in 1995 because of the general shortening of jobs. Since then worked as a watchman at the industrial plant until 1998); unemployed since Spring, 1998; divorced, no children.
Parental family and chidhood memories. Though in the humouristic way Dima emphasizes professionalism of his parents. He says: ‘My dad was a professional military driver, and my mum was a professional salesperson’.
The image of the father. Dima at length talks about his father and gives
and ambiguous picture of him. Though Dima liked his communicative character
he very often saw him drunk. Dima also mentioned that his father did not
spent much time with him.
‘He was always busy with himself, so to say. He played billiards brilliantly,
it took a lot of time in evenings and at nights. He was a coquette, a very
good dancer, a lively guy... . He was often tipsy. He had a crazy motorcycle
with a carriage... When he drove into the yard, mum and grandma knew already
that he was dead drunk, because when he tugged the key out of the and threw
his leg over the motorcycle he immediately fell down on the pavement...
Mum and Grandma dragged him home. He enjoyed drinking...’
Our comment is that scene of male (father’s) drinking were habitual for Dima’s childhood.
Boys’ and teenager’s culture. Dima went to the kindergarten and later
in the age of 7 entered a comprehensive school. They lives in the centre
of the city. His friends were a company from school and neighborhood. Their
communicative style was less brutal and destructive than that of
the street boys’ culture in the suburbs of the town in the 1970s or 1980s
(See scripts ‘Student’ and ‘Eternal Teenager ’).
‘We played all the games we new, I swear. We did not have skates, but
we played hockey without skates... We played in the streets and sometimes
hurt the passers by.... This was happiness. We played and nobody got angry
at us...’ Though boys were aquainted with militia station taken there for
a broken window or something alike, they took it as normal. The attitude
of the town dwellers to the boys’ street culture in the 1950s was friendly.
It was a typical Soviet boyish childhood with the sports, yard culture
(ice-cream, bike, dacha in a company of friends).
The leisure of the youth in the end of 1950s - early 1960s included such practice as attending of city dancing halls. Dancings took place in the Houses of Culture. ‘There were learnt love’, Dima says. ‘We glued up women and they fucked us. And we did not know how to do it. I was 18 y.o. at that time’.
Drinking debut. It was habitual that before the dancing hall youngsters drink a glass of table wine. This made them. Later the light drink was substituted by the fortified one: they cheered themselves up by the cheap portwine 33 after which the ‘ felt girls on their asses’. An inspiring drinking was considered necessary part of teaanager early sexual life.
It is structurally important that first drinking and smoking are mostly of cheap low quality products. The trademarks that Dima mentions (Port #33, cigarettes ‘Pushka’, ‘Junyi’) were known for their very low quality.
First work: When he failed to enter Theatrical college in 1962, he started
to work at the industrial plant as a electric assistant.
Dima’s working class experience as in other cases (‘Eternal Teenager’,
‘Manual Worker’) was marked by heavy drinking.
As his brigadier understood that Dima had no idea of ‘how petrol goes
along the wires to bulbs’, he prohibited him even to approach the cable
and knife-switches. Dima’s job was different. His task was to go unnoticed
from the plant are during the working hours and by the end of the day,
to lay table with vodka. Workers brought snacks from home. ‘These were
my duties of an electrician’, he comments.
Dima is convinced that the plant was the place where he learnt to drink vodka. ‘They drank each day in the end of the working hours’ he tells.... ‘They were first class specialists and first class people. I am very grateful to them... The thing is that I did nothing but got my wages regularly (laughs) and it was not that small for those days. I got about 150-160 rubles... It was enough for everything: to buy ... English jeans, good quality...’
Dima worked about a year at this plant. He remembers: ‘I just fucked all female crane-drivers and resigned’. Then he entered the college but soon was recruited to the military service.
Military conscription is still a necessary institution for male socialization in Russia. Dima’s military service (1964-1968) was his favourite memories. He was recruited to the privileged air-raid landing forces, though he had a phobia- he was afraid of height... He served for three years and never experienced neither violation of the rights of the junior soldiers not any kind of the out of Statute relations (dedovshchina). Dima claims that the Army of the 1960s was very different from that of the later times. During his term Dima claims, he met only first class officers, Heroes of the Soviet Union... Many officers were participants of the WWII... Dima became the head of the Komsomol organization in his detachment.
‘I loved these people and they loved me. I liked it, I am sincere. Because it was very different... Oh God, if there would be a professional army at that time, probably I would agree to be military all my life...’
Dima believes, that the reason for this friendly style in his detachment was constituency of the military brigade to which he belonged. All of them were Leningradians. ‘I think a Leningradian will never allow himself to force another Leningradian to wash his puttees (foot bindings)’.
Another reason for his love for Army was the realization of true masculinity
which, he believes, it provided.
‘There I felt myself a true man. It is because I met true friends there,
whom I still see a lot - now I am 52... The Army did not separate us, it
made real human beings from us’.
One more reason for this affection was the feeling of being adult .‘ I think the Army was one of the best moments in my life. In any case at that time I was first time separated from my parents’...
We focus on the Dima’s military service experince because it is instructive
for his understanding of the true manhood and relebant values, attitudes
and practices.
The military service also included drinking practices.‘It was not a
big problem. If we wanted to drink very much we drank, if not - then we
did not drink. However, in the Army I managed to get really drunk
two times’.
It is because Dima liked the atmosphere of his military detachment so much he decided to continue the military carreer in the High KGB School after demobilization. However. quite soon he felt dissapointed and dismissed, confessing to administration that he had made a mistake in the choice of profession. He got the rebuke from the Party organization and was quietly released.
Jobs, professional life. He changed several jobs that had not satisfied him on different reasons (a loader at the Lenfilm studio, a trolley-driver) and finally started to work as a camera man at the Lenfilm studio, thus his best dreams came true. Dima’s working record at the Studio is 25 years (1970-1975). His upward mobility was from the first job of a help of assistant operator to the last position of a second operator.
‘I loved to work on the studio very much, everything was different there compared with normal routine life. I got mass of new friends, acquaintances, semi-friends, quarter-friends, what’s not! I knew practically everybody who worked there and at the best times up to 3000 people worked there. I believe I knew everyone by the first name. And everybody knew me.’
The work at the Studio gave Dima a lot of joy and interest. His work attitude was conditioned by the content of work but also by prestigious communication it provided- these two factors were inseparable and extremely valuable for him. It also gave him opportunity of traveling all over Russia during shooting periods. Adventure was another characteristic which he gives to his professional life. He calls it his fate. He loved everything there.
The work at the Studio gave place for the combination of professional communication with friendships and private communication. It was habitual to have love affairs on the working place, a lot of drinking and celebrations took place there. Work was the life-world absorbing all interests of the participants. If we compare Camera-Man with Komandor we’ll see how different are their drinking patterns. In a way Dima’s life world can be likened to that of bohemia. However, his position was not marginal or anti-Soviet. He was quite well integrated in the Soviet system. The job of a camera man was prestigious and brought him a lot of benefits.
In 1995 Dima was dismissed. This was the time when Lenfilm studio was
bankrupted and stopped producing films. He did not go for retraining at
any qualification courses. When he was asked why he did not try to learn
some new profession, though he had been aware that jobs at the studio would
be cut, he justified himself in the following way:
‘I have a trauma of hands - I cannot work even as a loader.... Somehow
I did not expect such a breakdown’.
After dismissal Dima found a job of a watchman (a guard) at the industrial plant. The work was boring and low paid. Recently the plant stopped. He estimates this downward mobility as an absolute personal breakdown
The places (or topography) of drinking is of special interest in
Dima’s story. Mostly the drinking places that he mentions deliberatly are
different working places at the studio and street-corner cafes.Among the
working places that Dima mentions are cabins of shooting operators, film
directors’ offices, cafes at the studio. Everyday drinking at the studio
became habitual, it was just a tradition. He gives a vivid description
of the drinking rituals at the working place:
‘We had this tradition to celebrate ... the hundred, two hundred,
four-hundred, five-hundred film cadre... We celebrated the first shooting
day and the last shooting day - it was a rite... It was the orderly thing
that at the studio everybody did drink from a cleaning woman to a director’.
However habitual working place drinking was, Dima sees its changes
in the course of his working life. In the first years of his work and untill
the end of 1980s the drinking atmosphere was less disruptive, ‘ nobody
spied and informed about drinking of others. Everybody lived in the
friendly atmosphere’ At that time frinking did not prevent people from
efficient work, as he claims: ‘films were produced, plan was implemented,
everything swirled and there were enough forces for everything...’
Studiomen mostly drank after shooting... because the work was intensive
and interesting. Drinking of the 1990s was more destructive. It prevented
efficient work.
Sobriety stations. Quite a few times in 1970s and 1980s Dima was taken to a sobriety stations. According to the rules, sobriety station officers had to inform personell officers of the working places of the cases. This information became the issue for administrative sanctions, such as ‘moral reprimand’ at the meeting of the working collectives, cut of benefits, revocation of the participation in prestigious expeditions, etc. This hapenned to many if not to everyone from our sample of respondents. Dima made his best to escape this procedure. With the help of female secretaries Dima and his drinking-mates managed to withdraw next in turn information letter from a sobriety station. After that they celebrated a problem solution by a bottle of wine accompanied by the processed cheese in the operator’s cabin with the girls who helped them in the operation...
Camera Man Drinking and women. Young girls admired the company of the studio operators. They considered it their special pleasure to be invited to drink in the company of the first-class camera-men and deputy film directors in the small cabins... Dima recollects, ‘In the expeditions.. the herd of local girls simply run after the shooting group... as if ‘circus came’. There was no lack of female presence and female caress... and it was not a simple vulgar drinking but it was arranged in a special way - something fine was cooked, we tried to get out of the town (to some nature place), we had transport (to take us there), we made shashlyk, bough meat... everything should be done tasty and beautiful... this how it was arranged’.
Leisure, communication. Dima hardly separated work and leisure in his
story. he descibes himself as an extremely communicative person.
Friends and good company are very valuable for him. He is an amiable guitar
player and singer. He always appreciated male company of friends from neighborhood,
from professional milieu, etc. These friendly gatherings were usually accompanied
group excessive drinking which he practiced for many years.
With the breakdown of the studio all his life-world collapsed
(both public and private spheres). ‘Everything became much worse. First
I was deprived of habitual money. Second, I was deprived of all my friends,
we had to separate. We meet very seldom in the street now’, he says.
Habitual circle of contacts was broken: ‘Everybody scattered after
two years of the chaos at the studio. Some people work as bricklayers,
others... sweep the streets near metro stations...
Dima assessed the change in his status as unfair. All those men who
became unemployed after the collapse of Lenfilm were the high class
professionals, he argues.
The collective is broken, friendship the core of male interaction is
ruined. Everybody is single now, according to his opinion. Maculinity of
the late Soviet time is in crisis.
‘Now everybody survives as he can... everybody is in a whirl as he can, there is no time left just to sit to talk... only occasionally. Of course, we call each other... We congratulate each other with the New Year...’
Drinking in the period of Russian reforms: from celebration to lament. Dima is sure that heavy drinking of his milieu is caused by the economic reforms. ‘Now, claims Camera Man, people do not want to go home because they don’t know what to tell to their wives, when they don’t bring money to the family’.
Describing the changing meanings of contemporary drinking from celebration to lament Dima notices that now men visit drinking places not to celebrate but to come together, to talk and to complain. Each such place - shalman, drop-in-place, kapelnitsa - has it own constituency. A stranger is a rare guest there. These places became specific male clubs and if they were more comfortable, and better furnished with tables and chairs men would not get out of there. ‘They forget their homes, they talk how everything if bad with their jobs, they complain and say how everything is breaking into pieces in their lives, how one’s career falls apart, how one’s wife left, how kids do not pay attention, how young mistress said that he should return to her only when he would earn enough...’
The condition of these men is far from being human. Dima claims that many of them are high class professional in their middle age. However under the current conditions, they are not needed, though they are high professional with some 30 years of working record.
Dima believes that his passage from the customary (normal) drinking to excessive heavy drinking is marked by the social changes in the country and at most by the collapse of his job. He argues: ‘In 25 years of work at the studio I’ve never seen people who got thin, who fell from hunger, who were digging in the garbage, though they drank and drank quite strong. And these are new traditions of democratic state: I’ve never met such a great number of beggars, invalids, homeless. However now people do not drink less. .. The difference is in the why of their drinking. In the previous times drinking brought some pleasure, it provided some communication, drew people together. Now they drink from grief, from hopelessness, just from grief....’
Now Dima is drinking on every occasion. He often drinks alone if he
finds a bottle, or joins a group of complaining middle-aged men at a drinking
place. He looks in the future with horror expecting that he will stay unemployed.
He has laready encountered age discrimination at hiring: as soon as he
announces his age (52), an employer says: ‘Thank you, good buy. Close the
door from the other side’.
Dima justifies his dismal lament drinking in the following way: ‘Now
when I drink I feel really better. I feel more quiet. Bad things do not
come into my mind... When one does not drink one day... one or two weeks...
there is a feeling that... you killed someone yesterday. You have some
ineradicable feeling of guilt in your soul. You feel guilty for yourself,
for your environment, for the fact that you failed, that you are single,
that there is no family.... And after you take in you feel better... Probably
drinks take the problem off, I donna know. May be it will be good to have
some pills that would take off psychologically. There are such pills, but
vodka is much cheaper’.
Dima also suffers from the fear of loneliness, fear of age. ‘It is sad when you are without a job, without a family. In general a person without things to do is half of a person. When a human being is alone, without work, without money, without any prospects, without future - it is just a collapse’.
Justification and motivation of drinking. Dima’s interpretations of
drinking are also numerous. In his life-course they are changing ranging
in the meaning from festive celebration of masculinity to lament over failed
masculinity.
Ascribing the meaning for his adolescent group drinking, Dima
says: ‘We drank for bravery... There was no keif, or any special pleasure
or intoxication in it.’
Drinking as constant celebration of masculinity, part of the festive
life including sexual and professional achievements- is one of the important
meanings ascribed to this practices by Dima. Another meaning of drinking
is inspiration - it makes life bright, vivid, adventurous, not boring.
Thus the life of Camera-Man at the studio was a constant feast - it was
joyful, in concord and interesting.
The change of meaning coicides in his story with theloss of the
favourite job which tranfer habitual drinking into desperate heavy drinking.
The excessive drinking is the consequence of the lack of work and continuity
of the working schedule and relevant communication.
Resume
Camera-Man drinking script is also built into masculinity frame.
He considers drinking customary male practice, accompanying a true man
in his happy and unhappy days. However throughout this script we see that
professional male friendship is the major frame for group heavy drinking.
Traditional masculinity presumed drinking practices but not alcoholism.
One of the features of the true masculinity - is a special skill to drink
much but not to get drunk; to have many sex-partners, but not many true
love stories... to have opportunities to get money, to have a job
- a male profession, to have friends. In this case drinking is a celebration
of masculinity. This script is in many ways similar to the script of the
Komandor. The differences is in the motivation. For Komandor his father
was a model person. He describes himself as a career oriented man. For
the Camera-man though his professional skillfulness is of great importance
for his self-understanding, basically his type is similar to the bohemia.
Attractiveness of the artistic circle, specific prestige of the cinema
industry gives a special glamour to his drinking stories. His drinking
is imbedded in the drinking in the company - ‘the soul’ of the company
should follow the major patterns of Russian masculinity - frienship grounded
on communication in group drinking and sexual giantism. Working place drinking
is another practice which he followed in 25 years of his labour record.
The breakdown of Soviet masculinity in the course of reforms transferred Dima into the close-to-bottom unemployed drunkard, who is looking for a wife who will take care of him. The end of his story is pierced by the pivotal feeling of the unrealized traditional concept of masculinity, for which Army male relationship is the ideal. Lament drinking is his only lot.
CONCLUSION
Our research shows that construction of masculinity in Russian male biographies necessarily includes drinking stories. A certain kind of modestly destructive mischief has been a key emblem of Russian maleness in broad distribution of Russian talk as other researchers believe (i.e. Ries, 1997). Heavy drinking is firmly rooted in Russian understanding of masculinity and it is well shown in the biographical narrativesof heavy drinking men.
Summarizing the results of the research we can state several conclusions.
First, we identified six scripts of heavy drinking. Each script we see as a configuration of contextually framed chains of drinking occasions. Thus a script can be described as a specific physiognomy determined by a configuration of contexts conducive for drinking and cluster of meanings ascribed to drinking by a narrator. We differentiate between cross-cutting and specific meanings of drinking, ascribed to this practice by a narrator. The meaning is reconstructed from the dreinking stories and from justification stories of a drunkard. Cross-cutting meanings are those that we find in every script. They are, for example, celebration of masculinity, celebration of male friendship. Specific meanings are fixed to a particulr scripts. Among them we can name, for example, protest drinking of a bohemian, student leisure drinking.
Second, research made it possible to identify social structures (contexts) conducive for the following specific festures of Russian drinking: drunken bouts, working place drinking, large amounts of drinking per one occasion, drinking of low quality fortified liquors.
Six scripts of heavy drinking (the list is open) are as follows: Bohemian, Eternal Teenager, Student, Manual Worker, Komandor, Camera-Man. Bohemian drankards are people only partially integrated in the Soviet social structures. One can call them marginal. They cannot follow the approved mobility lifts of the society, constantly violating rules of the game in public. Drinking make them brave and mischieouvous. In this case heavy drinking is part of the culture of the bohemian milieu. Drinking meanings are diverse, including celebration of liberation; cultural and political protest; celebration of male solidarity and friendship. Soviet bohemian drinking is imbedded in the temporality and political context of stagnation that provided limited opportunities for artistic self-realization. This drinking script is framed by the company of bohemians and bohemian places such as cafe Saigon. It is combined with the practices of love-making, creative work and often with lack of institutional affiliations.
Eternal Teenager script is based on strategy of escaping from responsibilities of the adult life. When the same strategy is used by men over 30 years old, it is seen as eternal teenagery. Heavy drinking here is a part of ‘leaving strategy’, when a person wants to escape the duties inscribed by his school life, family life, job, political participation, etc. Drinking is inevitable part of an Eternal Teenager’s escapism of the Soviet and post-Soviet society. Compared to a Bohemian, this script is not contaminated by creative aspirations. The main meanings of drinking are teenager integration, celebrating company life and escaping adult responsibilities. In this script it is possible to identify structural features of teenager drinking: first drinks and smokes take place in uncomfortable conditions of consumption cheap low quality products. The accompanying practices are street hooliganism, mischief and teenager fights. Heavy drinking is seen as a practice per se, no reflexion on its destructive consequences is provided.
Student heavy drinking is imbedded in the student mileu - university schooling, creative work and male youth brotherhood. Male student brotherhood comprise drinking, drug consumption, intellectual talk, playing music, etc. Excessive drinking is seen as lack of regulation of normal drinking promoted by the social conditions which are considered ‘crazy’. Drugs and drinking are often seen as a dope for creative work giving new perspectives and new expereinces for a man. Exeseccive drinking is blamed and is seen as a barrier for self-realization of a man which is possible to get rid of.
Manual Worker script is the one of the working class milieu. In this case drinking is a most habitual practice which industrial workers encountered and implemented everywhere - at work, at leisure time, in holidays and weekdays. Its is a cross-cut script which we find in many life-stories when our narrators had an experience of low quality industrial work. Manual workers drink for celebraton and relaxation, in grief and in happiness, alone, in the family, with friends and with strangers. They reproduce drinking together with their social position as part of their life-style. Drinking as a condition for adventure - a substitute for interesting leisure and initiative behaviour - are characteristic meanings for this script. The scripts is marked by the drinking preference found in vodka, often also mixed drinks are used (vodka with beer). Working place drinking is a typical occasion. Heavy drinking is mildly blamed but not really reflected upon. This script is not temporaly and politically bound - you can find it the low class life-style both in Soviet and post-Soviet times.
Pivotal for the Komandor drinking script is the crisis of masculinity concept, which is seen as a major condition of heavy drinking. If occasional, communicative festive drinking is seen as one in the series of true masculine practices, excessive drinking works mainly as an instrument of stress management. Komandor’s excessive drinking is framed as a expression of the failure of the true masculinity project of a breadwinner in good standing who has well-paid male job, proper family (a house-wife and children), and relevant household (his own fully equipped house or apartment ). Other cross-cut meanings of drinking are celebration of friendship, leisure practice, love-making.
Camera-Man script contains two major meanings of heavy drinking: the one based on his professional life and the one founded on the contemporary reform version of masculinity crisis. True masculinity expressed in professional male friendship is the major frame for group heavy drinking in the professional milieu of the Studio. However, true masculinity is seen as conducive for drinking (accompanied by adventures, celebrations, love-making) but not alcoholism. Execcive contemporary Russian male drinking is seen as a result of mass unemployement of the middle-aged professionals. Joblessness is seen as a major ruiner for their lives. Heavy individual and group drinking is justified by the loss of life perspectives. Places of these drinking are street corner cafes which are see as settings of male complaint.
We also identified the contexts conducive to destructive heavy drinking.
They are teenager milieus; student milieus; professional milieus of the
Soviet time; working class milieu and post-Soviet masculinity crisis
context. Research showed that mostly men start drinking when teenagers.
In all the cases drinking occurred often in the uncomfortable conditions
- at the stairs, in public toilets, in the street jards. Drinking debutes
are mainly of low quality drinks. Other teenager practices accompanying
these drinking are solidarity fights, celebrations of male freindships,
etc.
Student male life in all the cases is also accompanied by group heavy
drinking. However this drinking is mainly of light positive meanings and
is seen as a temporal practice of the age.
Soviet professional drinking comprise people who could not realise
themselves under the strict barriers for up-ward social mobility
- many of them were made bohemians by the Soviet conditions -
drinking was the strategy of escapist protest to the regime. Working class
gloomy drinking is the one which is depicted brightly in the classical
novels of Ch. Dickens, E. Zolya, F. Dostoevski, M. Gorky and other writers.
Drinking is seen in this case as part of the low working class life-style.
Post-Soviet crisis of masculinity provides a major frame for the
contemporary reinforcement of drinking in those cases when men feel deprived
of their previous social positions.
Our script list is not closed. However we believe that the research
shows that drinking is one of the major practices of masculinity.
Both failed and sucessful masculinities provide place for drinking stories.
We believe that it is failed or unhappy masculinity frame which is a
major justification for the Russian self-destructive heavy drinking and
alcoholism. The changes in heavy drinking thus can be seen as the changes
of drinking practices - access to better quality of liquors, better conditions
of public place drinking, control at the drinking at the working places
including improvement of work motivation and general economic growth providing
well-paid jobs.
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2 Glue ‘Moment’ is known to be the most popular drug used by teenagers.