We explore obstetrician-gynecologists' (ob-gyns') shifting involvement in late Soviet and... more We explore obstetrician-gynecologists' (ob-gyns') shifting involvement in late Soviet and post-Soviet reproductive politics and track broader political-economic dynamics of the profession's ambivalent relations with state demographic discourses. Soviet ob-gyns largely distanced themselves from explicitly pronatalist agendas. Post-soviet national politics of 'population renewal' and the neoliberalization of health care have significantly restructured ob-gyns' orientations. To assert their authority and gain economic footing, ob-gyns have highlighted their contributions to the state's demographic agendas. The post-Soviet context illustrates how understanding the medicalization of population problems requires examining the political-economic relations between physicians and the state - dynamics that can transform ideologies and medical practices.
The discourse on the demographic crisis in contemporary Russia resonates with a neoliberal politi... more The discourse on the demographic crisis in contemporary Russia resonates with a neoliberal political project that attempts to govern populations through the market logic of optimization, responsibilization, and efficacy. Yet, as this article argues, the basic categories of the discourse, although evocative of a new neoliberal rationality, were in fact born of epistemological changes that took place in the Soviet science of population in the last decades of the USSR. Specifically, the analytical shift from Marxist-Leninist demography, which stressed a strong economic determinism, to the concept of demographic behavior, which became central to the discipline's analytical toolkit in the late Soviet period, produced political ideas in which individual behavior became both the core of the population problem and its solution. The article follows these institutional and conceptual transformations and shows how knowledge produced by Soviet demographers in that period continues to provid...
Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and n... more Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and naming, this article explores the statistical categories of ‘international migrant/foreign-born’ population used in three major cross-national data sources (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat and The World Bank Indicators (WBI)). We argue that these seemingly politically neutral categories ignore historical processes of state formation and migration, and privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state. We demonstrate how, in regions with recent geopolitical changes, the international migrant category’s spatial and temporal constraints produce distorted population parameters, by marking those who have never crossed sovereign states’ borders as international migrants. In certain social contexts, applying the international migrant category to those who have never crossed international borders shapes and legitimizes restrictive citizenship poli...
Abstract This paper explores the phenomenology of racism using the Israeli situation as a case st... more Abstract This paper explores the phenomenology of racism using the Israeli situation as a case study to examine if, when and how the concept of 'racism'is employed in local media discourse on policy towards Palestinian citizens. Our central argument is that racism, as a ...
This article examines the complex relations between two social processes – standardisation and qu... more This article examines the complex relations between two social processes – standardisation and quantification in measuring migration. We explore how international migrant populations in the Europea...
We explore obstetrician-gynecologists' (ob-gyns') shifting involvement in late Soviet and... more We explore obstetrician-gynecologists' (ob-gyns') shifting involvement in late Soviet and post-Soviet reproductive politics and track broader political-economic dynamics of the profession's ambivalent relations with state demographic discourses. Soviet ob-gyns largely distanced themselves from explicitly pronatalist agendas. Post-soviet national politics of 'population renewal' and the neoliberalization of health care have significantly restructured ob-gyns' orientations. To assert their authority and gain economic footing, ob-gyns have highlighted their contributions to the state's demographic agendas. The post-Soviet context illustrates how understanding the medicalization of population problems requires examining the political-economic relations between physicians and the state - dynamics that can transform ideologies and medical practices.
The discourse on the demographic crisis in contemporary Russia resonates with a neoliberal politi... more The discourse on the demographic crisis in contemporary Russia resonates with a neoliberal political project that attempts to govern populations through the market logic of optimization, responsibilization, and efficacy. Yet, as this article argues, the basic categories of the discourse, although evocative of a new neoliberal rationality, were in fact born of epistemological changes that took place in the Soviet science of population in the last decades of the USSR. Specifically, the analytical shift from Marxist-Leninist demography, which stressed a strong economic determinism, to the concept of demographic behavior, which became central to the discipline's analytical toolkit in the late Soviet period, produced political ideas in which individual behavior became both the core of the population problem and its solution. The article follows these institutional and conceptual transformations and shows how knowledge produced by Soviet demographers in that period continues to provid...
Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and n... more Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and naming, this article explores the statistical categories of ‘international migrant/foreign-born’ population used in three major cross-national data sources (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat and The World Bank Indicators (WBI)). We argue that these seemingly politically neutral categories ignore historical processes of state formation and migration, and privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state. We demonstrate how, in regions with recent geopolitical changes, the international migrant category’s spatial and temporal constraints produce distorted population parameters, by marking those who have never crossed sovereign states’ borders as international migrants. In certain social contexts, applying the international migrant category to those who have never crossed international borders shapes and legitimizes restrictive citizenship poli...
Abstract This paper explores the phenomenology of racism using the Israeli situation as a case st... more Abstract This paper explores the phenomenology of racism using the Israeli situation as a case study to examine if, when and how the concept of 'racism'is employed in local media discourse on policy towards Palestinian citizens. Our central argument is that racism, as a ...
This article examines the complex relations between two social processes – standardisation and qu... more This article examines the complex relations between two social processes – standardisation and quantification in measuring migration. We explore how international migrant populations in the Europea...
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Papers by Inna Leykin