Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Domesticities (Gender, Infrastructure and the Production of Domesticity in the (Post)Communist City)
Reporting period: 2019-10-01 to 2021-09-30
In view of analysing these relationships, the project had three main objectives:
1) To examine the social, cultural, political and technological contexts of the production of such housing infrastructure
2) To understand the patterns of subjective transformation and the transformation of practices of gender through an ethnographic investigation
3) To investigate the intersections between the above mentioned processes in order to generate a deeper understanding of the relationship between domestic spaces and women under communism and within the contemporary post-communist condition.
Stage 1 - Literature Review. The first stage implied an extensive literature review of scholarship in gender studies and socialist architecture in the Eastern Bloc and in post-socialist context of Romania. The aim was to achieve a comprehensive review of existing scholarship, including theoretical frameworks and approaches to other national contexts in Eastern Europe, as well as to establish a theoretical foregrounding of the main concepts that the project employed: domesticity, infrastructure, gendered subjectivity.
Stage 2 - Ethnographic and Archival Research
I. The archival research examined three aspects:
a) The planning and spatial strategies, as well as the functional shaping of domestic space under communism. This was achieved mainly consulting the archival collection of Arhitectura magazine within the collection of the Union of Romanian Architects.
b) The state policies and legal framework of the time regarding the transformation of the city, as well as the legal framework focused on women’s integration into the labour force, political participation, and the monitoring and control of women’s reproductive and family life. This was achieved mainly by consulting "Monitorul Oficial"/"Buletinul Oficial" archival collection 1947-1989, as well as by consulting thematic publications of the timeframe 1965-1989.
c) The official discourse regarding the constitution of the socialist woman. This was achieved by consulting the archival collection of "Femeia" [The Woman] magazine published between 1965-1989.
II. Ethnographic research included qualitative fieldwork consisting of user observation, field notes, photography, videos and semi-structured interviews with inhabitants (both women and men).
The fieldwork was undertaken between June - September 2020 in Bucharest and consisted in the examination of several districts in Bucharest built during the socialist regime.
During this phase I started the production of a documentary film based on the ethnographic fieldwork presenting the experiences of women both during socialism and in its aftermath.
Stage 3 - Reflection and Dissemination carried out through colloquium organisation, articles, conference participation, as well as the production of a documentary film, and exhibition.
The results of the project include:
WEBSITE
PUBLICATIONS
LECTURES/INVITED TALKS/CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
DOCUMENTARY FILM
PERSONAL EXHIBITION
TEACHING
Infrastructure - understood in this research as domestic infrastructure that assumed an instrumental role in the subjective formation
Gendered subjectivity - understood as women’s embodies experience of the built environment
Communist biopolitics - the notion becomes especially relevant within the specific context of Romania between 1966-1989 insofar as mass architecture was profoundly intertwined with the administration of life and the production of a socialist subject
The project has had an impact in the domain of architectural research both as a conceptual framework as well as a methodology employed. By using documentary film as a method of architectural research, the project has broadened its scope giving a voice to the very inhabitants of the housing typologies that were analysed. By using documentary film as a method of research the subjects became themselves aware of the questions that the research had raised. It has also broadened the impact of the project by making it visible to a very broad audience that involved not only academic environments from various disciplines, but also a wider, non-specialist public.
In addition, the project has the potential to generate impact beyond its term, through the outputs that it has completed. For instance continuing to present the documentary film in various contexts and venues to present to much wider audiences the results of this research project.