Date:
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Emily Channell-Justice, Director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, HURI
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Abstract
Perhaps above all else, Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine has shown the remarkable strength of the Ukrainian people. Although the Ukrainian government, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, has played a pivotal role in rallying support for and leading efforts to defend Ukraine against Russia, Ukrainians have proven time and again that they will step up to defend their country and their freedom with or without the support of the government.
At the end of 2013, with a pro-Russian Yanukovych government turning its back on Ukraine’s aspirations to join the European Union, Ukrainians gathered in protest in what would become the Euromaidan Revolution. In addition to ousting the president, various groups of activists mobilized to shape the post-Maidan political sphere. With the illegal annexation of Crimea and the Russia-backed separatist movements inciting war in the Donbas in 2014, civil society networks remained critical as Ukraine fought for its democracy and territorial integrity for eight years and counting.
When Russia invaded on February 24 and brought the full force of its army upon Ukraine, the smaller and lesser-armed country responded with unimaginable tenacity. The concept of self-organization, a technique that Ukrainians across the political spectrum had honed over the preceding years, has been fundamental to the country’s ability to respond with agility, efficiency, and efficacy.
In this talk, Emily Channell-Justice will present her original research from the 2013-2014 Euromaidan mobilizations and discuss how the phenomenon of self-organization – that if something needs to be done and you have the capacity to do it, you should do it – was embraced during the Euromaidan, shaped Ukrainians’ attitudes toward their relationship with the government and their communities, and established trust networks Ukrainians were able to build on to meet urgent needs in 2022.
Book Description
Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine explores the 2013–14 Euromaidan protests – a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine – through in-depth ethnographic research with leftist, feminist, and student activists in Kyiv. The book discusses the concept of "self-organization" and the notion that if something needs to be done and a person has the competence to do it, then they should simply do it.
Emily Channell-Justice reveals how self-organization in Ukraine came out of leftist practices but actors from across the spectrum of political views also adopted self-organization over the course of Euromaidan, including far-right groups. The widespread adoption of self-organization encouraged Ukrainians to rethink their expectations of the relationship between citizens and their state. The book explains how self-organized practices have changed people’s views on what they think they can contribute to their own communities, and in the wake of Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has also motivated new networks of mutual aid within Ukraine and beyond. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, including the author’s first-hand experience of the entirety of the Euromaidan protests, Without the State provides a unique analytical account of this crucial moment in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.
About the Speaker
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Emily Channell-Justice is the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University. A sociocultural anthropologist, she first started learning the Ukrainian language and carrying out research in Ukraine in 2012. She pursued research on political activism and social movements among students and feminists during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan mobilizations. She is the author of an ethnography, Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine (University of Toronto; 2022), and an edited volume, Decolonizing Queer Experience: LGBT+ Narratives from Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Lexington Books; 2020). She has published academic articles in several journals, including History and Anthropology, Revolutionary Russia, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She received her PhD from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, in September 2016, and she was a Havighurst Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of International Studies at Miami University, Ohio from 2016-2019. |
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