The Culture, Borders, Gender/LAB – Dep. of Balkan Slavic and Oriental Studies
Invites you to the organized lectures
within the «OUR FARAWAY NEIGHBORS» –lecture series
by two invited professors from Bulgaria:
Ana Luleva, Professor, celebrated member of the Faculty
of Ethnology and Balkan Studies at SWU “Neofit Rilski” – Blagoevgrad, Boulgaria.
Pavlina Solachka, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Ethnology and Balkan Studies, SWU
“Neofit Rilski” – Blagoevgrad, Boulgaria.
Monday, 20/03/2023, 19.00-21:00,
classroom 4
lecture titles:
Prof. Ana Luleva: The Bulgarian Female Labour Migration and the Moral Economy of
Care
Assistant Prof. Pavlina Solachka: Women’s narratives about work and everyday life in
the last decades of state socialism in Bulgaria (1970s and 1980s)
Abstacts
The Bulgarian Female Labour Migration and the Moral Economy of Care
Since the early 1990s, female labour migration from Bulgaria has become a common practice and has acquired unprecedented dimensions. In this lecture I will address the characteristics of the most popular form of the Bulgarian female labour migration to Italy, namely work as caregivers of old people, sick family members and children. The specificity of work – from the decision to get employed abroad as domestic care workers – through its practice to its meaning for the families of the female migrants marks it as an intersection point of pure economic goals and relationships, on the one hand, and moral ones, on the other. This defines my research problem: to analyse the moral economy of care from the perspective of women care workers.
Women’s narratives about work and everyday life in the last decades of state socialism
in Bulgaria (1970s and 1980s)
This lecture presents some of the main topics in the biographical narratives of women – tobacco workers during state socialism. Their value as sources for the study of gender arrangements and gender order at that time will be also discussed. The collection of biographical interviews was part of my research and the writing of my PhD thesis on “The Women’s workinglifein the Pirin Tobacco Factory, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria”.
Short CVs
Dr. Ana Luleva (ID https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-7185-7867) is a Professor of Ethnology at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and at the South-west University “Neofit Rilski”, Blagoevgrad. Her research interests are in the fields of anthropology of socialism and post-socialism, gender studies, memory studies, critical heritage studies, anthropology of uncertainty and trust. She is an Editor-in-chief of the journal Antropologiya/Anthropology. Journal for Sociocultural Anthropology.
Among the recent publications are: Luleva, A. Culture of Dis/Trust in Bulgaria.
Anthropological Perspectives. 2021, Sofia: IK Gutenberg; Everyday Socialism: Promises, Realities, and Strategies. Edited by A. Luleva, I. Petrova, P. Petrov, Sv. Kazalarska, Y.Yancheva, and Zl. Bogdanova. 2022, Sofia: Acad. Publishing House ”Prof. Marin Drinov”; Luleva, A. Rethinking “Private” in State Socialist Bulgaria. – In: Everyday Socialism: Promises, Realities, and Strategies. Ed. by A. Luleva & all., 2022, Sofia: Acad. Publishing House ”Prof. Marin Drinov”, 50-79.
Dr. Pavlina Solachka is an assistant in the Faculty of Philology at the South-West University “Neofit Rilski” in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Prior to earning her PhD in Ethnology, Dr. Solachka earned her honorary Bachelor Degree in Ethnology at SWU “Neofit Rilski”,then enrolled in Master Degree program with a specific concentration in “Ethnicity and Culture”, again at SWU “Neofit Rilski”. In 2022, Dr. Solachka defended her PhD
Dissertation which examined “The everyday life of the female working class during late socialism: a case study of the tobacco plant ‘Pirin’ in Blagoevgrad.” Dr. Solachka’s research interests are in the field of anthropology, more specifically that of socialism and post-socialism, women’s studies, as well as the development of the Tabaco industry in Bulgaria. Dr. Solachka has several publications in journals, dedicated to research of state
socialism in Bulgaria.