Transnational Contested Identities and Food Practices of Russian-Speaking Jewish Migrants in Israel and Germany
E-Book, Deutsch, Englisch, 451 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-593-41017-3
Verlag: Campus
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
1;Table of Contents;8
2;Acknowledgments;12
3;1 Migration collages: Studying Russian-speaking Jews in Israel and Germany;16
3.1;1.1 Migration and socio-cultural affiliations;16
3.2;1.2 The research approach;18
3.3;1.3 Research questions;21
3.4;1.4 Research methods;23
3.5;1.5 Comparative view of the two populations;34
3.6;1.6 General characteristics of the investigated groups;35
3.7;1.7 Transporting Jewish identity from the SU;40
3.8;1.8 Overview of the book;42
4;2 Transnationalism and capitalism: Migrants from the former Soviet Union and their experiences in Germany and Israel;46
4.1;2.1 The Soviet kind of capitalism: Soviet spirituality vs. Western materialism;51
4.2;2.2 Post-Soviet capitalism on food commodities;57
4.3;2.3 “Arrival on a new planet”“;68
4.4;2.4 Reviving Soviet knowledge about the social reality of life in the capitalist system;81
4.5;2.5 “The Russia we had always dreamed of”—some conclusions;90
5;3 “Chocolates without history are meaningless: ”Pre- and post-migration consumption;96
5.1;3.1 Soviet “hunting and gathering”;99
5.2;3.2 The classic Soviet recipe book: On the Tasty and Healthy Food Book;108
5.3;3.3 Social skills of post-migration consumption;115
5.4;3.4 Alternative ways of procurement and free consumption;124
5.5;3.5 Contested procurement;142
6;4 Russian food stores in Israel and Germany: Images of imaginary home, homeland, and identity consolidation;143
6.1;4.1 Visibility of Russian food stores in Israel and Germany;147
6.2;4.2 Image of the hostess in the Russian food stores;151
6.3;4.3 Longing for the REAL home via food;154
6.4;4.4 Commercial promotion of nostalgia;165
6.5;4.5 Images of the Soviet paradise;173
6.6;4.6 Image of Soviet proletarian food or the imaginary proletarian home;179
6.7;4.7 Images of the Soviet empire and the Soviet political iconography of food post-emigration;185
6.8;4.8 Nationalized Russia in food products and gastronomic Slavophilism of ex-citizens abroad;201
6.9;4.9 Meaning of Russian food stores in Israel and Germany;212
7;5 Russian food stores in Israel and Germany: Different national symbolic participations and virtual transnational enclave;220
7.1;5.1 Special national key symbols crossing borders and manifestations of identity: The symbolic meaning of pork and caviar in different national contexts;223
7.2;5.2 Pork;227
7.3;5.3 Caviar;249
7.4;5.4 Mixed national identities in Russian food stores in Israel and Germany;257
7.5;5.5 Reconsidering the immigrant enterprise: From traditional, closed ethnic business toward a virtual transnational enclave;269
8;6 Transjewish affiliation: The construction of ethnicity by Russian-speaking Jews in Israel and Germany;274
8.1;6.1 The “ethnicity” and ethnization processes of Russian-speaking Jews;276
8.2;6.2 Component One: Innate ethnicity and visible Otherness and its fate abroad;279
8.3;6.3 Component Two: Significant Others in the SU and abroad;294
8.4;6.4 Component Three: Suspect loyalty: Soviet Jewish Otherness through affiliation with Israel;314
8.5;6.5 Component Four: Affiliation with Soviet Russian cultural elite;316
8.6;6.6 Conclusion;320
8.7;6.7 Triple Trans-Jewish affiliation;322
9;7 Winners once a year? Making sense of WWII and the Holocaust as part of a transnational biographic experience;329
9.1;7.1 Celebration of Den’ Pobedy Victory Day;330
9.2;7.2 Conflicting meanings of May 8th and 9th;333
9.3;7.3 Soviet victors’ narrative and the theme of the Holocaust in the SU;336
9.4;7.4 Transnational praxis of the everyday knowledge after migration to Germany;348
9.5;7.5 Proud of the Soviet victory, offended by the Soviet state or marginalized winners;355
9.6;7.6 Challenging the victory narrative and burdensome identities;358
9.7;7.7 The Outsider perspective;363
9.8;7.8 Principally Others: Media discourse about the topic;365
9.9;7.9 Shifting of the collective “we:” Media presentation of Germans and settled Jews as the symbolical “we” compared to “Russians”;367
9.10;7.10 “Without us Israel would not have come into existence. We won the war and put an end to the Holocaust…”;369
9.11;7.11 Comparative conclusions of different modifications of the original narratives in Israel and Germany;370
10;8 “Will you prepare gefillte fish for Christmas?” Paradoxes of living in simultaneously contested social worlds243;374
10.1;8.1 Reconsidering identities, reproducing stereotypes, coping with hierarchies;375
10.2;8.2 Alienation, home, and homeland: “Why not Israel?” Self-positioning of Russian-speaking Jews in Germany and Israel;390
10.3;8.3 Conclusion;409
10.4;8.4 Contributions of this research;411
10.5;8.5 Further development;414
11;Bibliography;416
12;Index;437
"2 Transnationalism and capitalism: Migrants from the former Soviet Union and their experiences in Germany and Israel (S. 140-141)
This chapter explores the participants’ perceptions and cultural constructions of capitalism or the capitalistic West after their emigration to Germany and to Israel. Not only is their migration accompanied by significant transformations in all spheres of the migrants’ everyday life, it offered them a unique opportunity to reflect on knowledge as well as behavioral schemes and values normally taken for granted and to act on the basis of these reflections. The special circumstances of the population investigated are that this is a case of emigration across the previously tightly closed borders of the Iron Curtain from what Markowitz (1991, 638) referred to as a “total system” to capitalist societies characterized by abundance and consumption- oriented cultures.
As former citizens of a closed society, the SU, participants lacked experience in the actual realities of living everyday amidst Western abundance, in a consumer culture, and with mass consumption. According to Miller this “is now the dominant context through which people in modern societies relate to the material world” (Appadurai 1996; Miller 1987, 4). Thus, emigration to a Western society led this group to encounter an absolutely new phenomenon and required that they develop strategies to cope with it on a permanent basis. Moreover, throughout their life in the SU, they were exposed to the powerful Soviet political machine’s propagandizing about life in the West.
Thus, migrants were socialized to view the Western society through negative deconstructions in which the West was the symbol, par excellence, of evil social regimes and the wrong way of life. The “decaying capitalist West,” as it was called in the Soviet media, was permanently juxtaposed to such frequent appellations as the “positive,” “right,” “humane,” “just,” “equal,” “spiritual Soviet socialist system.”
For example, a poster purchased by a participant in a Russian bookstore in Israel is a reprint of a 1948 poster that displays two pictures (picture 2:1). On the left side is a black-white picture of a violinist, in a capitalist country, destined to play on the streets while being completely ignored by passers-by who are portrayed as men in coats and bowlers (recalling an old image of capitalists). The violinist looks very depressed. Depicted above this scene are many lights and advertisements, such as White Horse Whisky. The caption at the bottom of the capitalist side of the poster states “The fate of talent…”
The fate of the violinist in socialist countries is presented on the poster’s right hand side in red letters. There the violinist is depicted appearing on stage in a big concert hall together with a huge organ, an orchestra, composed of hundreds of male and female musicians. The national emblem of the SU is depicted on this socialist side of the poster in approximately the same place as the advertisement for whisky is displayed on the capitalist side. The title for socialist depiction is positive—“The route of the talented!”
