(Re-)Claiming the Social Contract: State-Society Relations in Three Former Socialist Towns in the Baltics

科学一直是我生命中最大的灵感之一。在学习政治学期间，我有机会探索了许多不同的学科领域，从政治哲学到区域研究。随着时间的流逝，我发现，在进行实地调研的同时，我也感受到了最大的挑战和乐趣。我和我所在大学的学者一起参加了一次科学考察，并作为学生研究员进行了一项关于国家权力延伸的实地研究，同时结合了定量和定性的研究方法。这让我对社会人类学和人种学特别感兴趣。因此，我自己在为我的学士论文进行实地研究，主题是最让我着迷的主题-国家与其社会关系。我正在询问立陶宛的东南部边界，在那里，国家对主要参与者建立社会和政治边界以及确保公民遵守的权力受到居住在那里的波兰少数民族的质疑。尽管在少数族裔权利问题上与中央政府保持着紧张的关系，但更深入地研究背景会发现，这个问题远比种族问题复杂得多。相反，它引发了人们对国家的忠诚和对国家的认同感的质疑。该地区最鲜明的特征之一是怀念苏联时代，仍然选择使用俄语和媒体(尽管有波兰语，当然还有立陶宛语的消息来源)，对邻国的威权政权持积极态度，并将乌克兰当前的事件归咎于西方。此外，该地区的历史丰富，属于不同的国家，对少数民族采取不同的政策，这使得问题更加复杂。怀特在进行实地研究时，我试图找出是什么因素和什么机制在阻碍国家将单一的国家认同引入该地区。在研究这个问题时，我了解到，这可能是一个更广泛的现象，可能也是该地区其他后苏联国家的特征。尽管苏联已经解体，但它的形象仍然活在人们的脑海中，它也在社会的年轻成员中重现。此外，在20世纪的大部分时间里，共产主义“适合”于仍有传统社会的年轻国家。正因为如此，人们对他们现在生活的现代(民主)陈腐的理解和他们与之的关系变得非常有趣。考虑到当今俄罗斯影响力的传播因素，它变得更加吸引人。我想继续在这个主题上工作，探索新的深度，并将其转移到立陶宛的其他地区和其他后苏联国家(特别是白俄罗斯)。为了做到这一点，需要对该区域和方法有更广泛和更深入的了解。

Science was always one of the biggest inspirations in my life. While studying political sciences, I had an opportunity to explore many different subject areas, ranging from political philosophy to regional studies. As years passed, I have found, that I feel the greatest challenge as well as pleasure while conducting a field research. I participated in a scientific expedition with academics from my University and worked as a student researcher conducting a field study on the outreach of state power while combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. That made me particularly interested in social anthropology and ethnography.As a result, I am conducting a field study myself for my Bachelor thesis on the topic that fascinates me the most - the relationship between the state and its society. I am inquiring the southeastern borderland of Lithuania, where the state's power to he the main actor establishing social and political boundaries as well as to secure the compliance of its citizens is contested by the Polish minority living there. Even though, a tense relationship with the central government is being maintained addressing the minority rights, a deeper look into the context reveals, that the problem is far more complicated than the matter of ethnicity. Rather, it raises questions about people's loyalty to the state and their identification with it. One of the most distinctive features of this region is nostalgia for the Soviet Era, still choosing Russian language and media (despite the availability of Polish and of course Lithuanian sources), thinking positively about the authoritarian regime of the neighboring country as well as blaming the West for the current events in Ukraine. Furthermore, the history of the region is rich of belonging to different states with different policies towards minorities that makes the problem even more complex. White conducting a field study, I am trying to figure out what actors and what mechanisms are being used that obstruct the state from introducing unitary national identity into the region.While working on this subject I have understood, that this might be a broader phenomenon, possibly also characterizing other post-Soviet countries in the region. Even though the Soviet Union has collapsed, the image of it is still alive in people's heads and it is reproducing in younger members of the society as well. Moreover, most of the time in the twentieth century communism was "fitted" to young countries with still traditional societies. Due to that, people's understanding of and their relationship with the modern (democratic) stale in which they arc living now becomes really interesting. It becomes even more engaging having in mind the factor of the spread of nowadays Russian influence. I would like to continue working on this topic, exploring new depths and transferring it to the other regions of Lithuania and other post-Soviet states (especially Belarus). In order to do that, a broader and deeper knowledge both of the region and methodology is needed.