Rural regeneration via authoritarian planning: The case of Belarusian agro-towns

This seminar will concentrate on the top-down policy of Belarusian authorities to turn larger villages into so-called agro-towns. Intended to discontinue the present-day agricultural decline and rural depopulation, Mr. Ivanou will explain why in the country where citizens are devoid of effective control over the allocation of public funds, most development attempts end up as a failure. The agro-towns will be examined through the prism of such concepts as potemkinism (dismissing present-day problems and presenting the rural life not as it is but as it is becoming) actively employed by the authorities to persuade villagers to stay put.

The Belarusian case is also instructive regarding the modernisation argument: even though some liberal thinkers (so-called “Western pragmatics”, starting with Cyril Black in the 1960s, who consider modernisation as an "empirical endeavour": "more steel, more schools etc”) would readily term these efforts in bringing the village closer to the city in terms of amenities and lifestyle as “modernisation”.  It is not so from a Marxist viewpoint, because these changes do not affect production relations, with the state retaining a monopoly on landed property, and because it does not promote civil society in Belarus beyond facades.

Another focus of the seminar will be on possibilities of doing social research in an authoritarian rural setting: what disadvantages and, conversely, advantages (there are some!) the authoritarian setting provides for an independent researcher, with a particularly promising approach being "personal engagement". The presenter Mr. Ivanou will substantiate his point based on his personal experience of living -and conducting participant observation- in a specific agro-town. 

About the speaker

Aleh Ivanou, worked as a Belarusian independent social researcher doing his PhD in Environmental Social Science at the University of Kent. An erstwhile physical geographer and university senior teacher, he also works periodically as an oil and gas engineer.

In 2015, Ivanou was recognised "a scholar at risk" by the Institute of International Education (NYC/US). Most recently he was a scholar-activist within the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative by the International Institute of Social Studies.