Iván Arenas is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research focuses on how emerging spatial practices and competing aesthetics in Oaxaca in the wake of the popular uprising of 2006 are shaping new ways of inhabiting and giving meaning to public space. Representative Publications: “Oversight/site: Modernity and its Rem(a)inders.” Pp. 131–150 in Luca Somigli and Domenico Pietropaolo (eds.) Modernism and Modernity in the Mediterranean World. Toronto: Legas, 2006; “Traces, Brazil’s Modern Remainders and Reminders.” In Concurso de Monografias Sobre Temas Brasileiros. San Francisco: Consulado Geral Do Brasil, Ministerio das Relações Exteriores, 2005.

Gastón Joaquín Beltrán is an assistant researcher at the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). He obtained his PhD in Social Science at the University of Buenos Aires in 2008. He is a member of a research team on “The Recent Configuration of Argentinean Elites: Businessmen, Politicians, and technopoly.” Selected publications: Los intelectuales liberales. Poder tradicional y poder pragmático en la Argentina reciente. Buenos Aires: Libros del Rojas; EUDEBA, 2005; “Acción empresaria e ideología. La génesis de las reformas estructurales.” In Alfredo Pucciarelli (ed.) La Argentina de los años ochenta. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. 2006; “Global Process, Local Meanings: The Argentine Local Supporters to the Structural Reforms.” Praksis 4, Ankara, 2006.

Karina Bidaseca is a researcher at the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). She teaches courses on Sociology and Postcolonial Studies as well as Social Movements and Collective Action at the Universities of Buenos Aires and San Martín. She is a participant in research projects at the University of Buenos Aires on “Community and Land Rights: Legal Orders and Cultural Processes Silenced” and “The Legacy of Africa.” Selected publications: Perturbando el texto colonial. Los Estudios (Pos) coloniales en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Ed. SB, 2010; “Patrimonialización y discursos de autenticidad en Tilcara y Humahuaca, luego de la Declaración de Patrimonio de la Humanidad.” In: Las tramas del patrimonio cultural. Historias, identidades, tradiciones y comunidades. Colombia: Observatorio de Patrimonio Cultural MIA Instituto Colombiano de Antro­pología e Historia; Fundación Erigaie Colciencias, 2009.

Marc Brightman is ESRC postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University. His research, based on fieldwork among the Trio, Wayana, and Akuriyo of southern Suriname and French Guiana, covers subjects including indigenous leadership, native Amazonian forms of ownership, and the politics of conservation. He is the author of “Creativity and Control: Property in Guianese Amazonia.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 96(1), and currently co-editing the forthcoming Shamanism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood in the Shamanic Ecologies of Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Oxford; New York: Berghahn Books).

Ludmila da Silva Catela holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and a master’s degree in sociology from the Federal University of Río de Janeiro. She teaches at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, and coordinates the Program of Memory Studies at the university’s Center for Advanced Studies. She is also a researcher at the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), and in this capacity is based at the National University of Córdoba’s Museum of Anthropology. She is the author of No habrá flores en la tumba del pasado. La experiencia de reconstrucción del mundo de familiares de desaparecidos. (La Plata: Ediciones Al Margen (2001; 2002; 2009), which has also been published in Portuguese by HUCITEC. She edited Los archivos de la represión: Documentos, memoria y verdad. (with Elizabeth Jelín, Madrid and Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2002) and Fotografía, memoria e identidad (with Elizabeth Jelín and Mariana Giordano, Buenos Aires: Trilce, 2010). She also compiled a collection of texts by Michael Pollak entitled Memoria, olvido, silencio. La producción social de identidades frente a situaciones límite (La Plata: Ediciones Al Margen, 2006). In addition, she has published journal articles and book chapters on violence, extreme situations, and memory. Finally, she currently directs the Provincial Archive of Memory in Córdoba.

Françoise Daucé received her PhD in political science from the Institute of Political Studies in Paris in 1999. She is currently assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Studies at Blaise-Pascal University (Clermont-Ferrand). She teaches Russian and Soviet history. Her current research examines civil society in contemporary Russia (and particularly human rights and ethno-cultural organizations). She participates in joint Franco-Russian collective research projects on everyday patriotism (2008–2010) and violence in Russia (2010–2012). She has published two books: L’Etat, l’armée et le citoyen en Russie post-soviétique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001) and La Russie postsoviétique (Paris: La découverte, 2008). She is also the author of numerous articles on civil-military relations, civil society, and ethno-cultural practices in post-Soviet Russia.

Veronika Dorman holds a master’s degree in Slavic Studies from the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne), where she wrote a thesis on the Solovki as a site of memory, and an advanced master’s degree from the same institution for a thesis on publishing activities of the Russian diaspora in France. Finally, she holds an advanced master’s degree in comparative politics from the Institut d’études politiques, where she wrote a thesis about the memory of Stalinist repression in 21st century Russia. She is based in Moscow and works as a journalist, translator, and interpreter, doing freelance work for a number of French newspapers and magazines.

Dace Dzenovska received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California in Berkeley. Through ethnographic work in Latvia, her dissertation explores the discourses and practices of tolerance promotion, which have emerged as an integral element of contemporary liberal political culture in Europe. She is currently at the University of Latvia, where she is pursuing a new project on mobility and ethics. Representative publications: “Neoliberal Imaginations, Subject Formation, and Other National Things in Latvia, the Land that Sings.“ Pp. 114–138 in Tsypylma Darieva and Wolfgang Kaschuba (eds.) Representations on the Margins of Europe: Politics and Identities in the Baltic and South Caucasian States (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2007); “Some Reflections on the ‘Global’ Crisis in Latvia” (with Alexandre Beliaev). Newsletter of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2009.

Roxana Eleta de Filippis is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Le Havre, and a research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research’s Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Mobility. She received her PhD from the University of Paris-I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). Her doctoral dissertation on pension reform in Argentina received the first prize of the French Pension Observatory. Her research focuses on social rights and public policy. As part of a collaborative project between the University of Glasgow and the Ceres Research Center at the University of Paris-II, she has studied the implementation of the social right to housing.

Marina Farinetti is a professor of Political Science and Political Theory at San Martín University. She participates in a research program on “Public Spaces and Democratic Conflicts,” a joint project of General Sarmiento University (Argentina) and the University of Paris-VII (Denis Diderot). Selected publications: “Movilización colectiva, intervenciones federales y ciudadanía en Santiago del Estero (1983–2005).” In: G. Delamata (ed.), Movilizaciones sociales: nuevas ciudadanías? Reclamos, derechos, Estado en Argentina, Bolivia y Brasil. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2009; “Les mésaventures d’un régime autoritaire en période démocratique. Santiago del Estero 1983–2008. ” La nouvelle revue Argentine 2.

Vanessa Elisa Grotti received her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2007. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled Nurturing the Other: Wellbeing, Social Body and Transformability in Northeastern Amazonia, is a study of change and social transformation among the Trio, Wayana and Akuriyo of southern Suriname and French Guiana. She is currently British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at ISCA (Oxford), studying the relations between Trio and Wayana Amerindians and the health care systems in Suriname and French Guiana. She has also been Research Fellow at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale (EHESS-Collège de France, Paris) and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is co-editor of Shamanism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood in the Shamanic Ecologies of Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Oxford; New York: Berghahn Books) and the author of several articles analyzing conversion to Christianity, corporeality, human/non-human relations, and beer production and consumption among Carib-speaking populations of northern Amazonia.

Jeffrey K. Hass is associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Richmond. Selected publications: Economic Sociology: An Introduction (New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2007); “The Experience of War and the Construction of Normality. Lessons from the Blockade of Leningrad.” Pp. 235–271 in: Nikita Lomagin (ed.), Bitva za Leningrad. Diskussionnye problemy (Saint Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2009); (with Tony Walter) “Parental Grief in Three Societies: A Study of Networks and Religion as Social Supports in Mourning.” Omega 54(3)/2007:179–198; “Trials and Tribulations of Learning the Market. Culture and Economic Practice in Russia’s Market Transition.” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (Pittsburgh: Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2005).

Mariana Heredia received her PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 2007. She is a senior researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at IDAES and teaches sociology at the Universities of Buenos Aires and San Martin. She is also an associated researcher at the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS) de Paris. Her current research is mostly related to the sociology of elites. In particular, she is a member of the research program “Recent Configuration of Argentinean Elites: Businessmen, Politicians, and technopoly”. She is also responsible for the project “The Structural Rich and the New Riches. Principles of Integration and Distinction.” She has published numerous papers on these topics in Spanish and in French, among which “Laboratoires de la mondialisation: les dictatures militaires argentine et chilienne et la pensée économique néo-classique.” Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire 105, January-March 2010 (with Stéphane Boisard).

Olessia Kirtchik is a senior researcher at the Institute of Statistical Studies and Economy of Knowledge, State University – Higher School of Economics; she is also a lecturer in sociology MA programs at that university and at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. She received her PhD in Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, in 2007, where she was also an associate researcher in 2008–2010. Her research interests lie mainly in the area of the socio­logy of economics and of economic policy, in the sociology of science, and in the methodology of social research (in particular, the historical and comparative ­method). She has published several articles on related topics in Russian and in French. She has also translated numerous scholarly articles from French into Russian (including Pierre Bourdieu and Robert Castel).

Gabriel Kessler holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He is a researcher at the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), and a professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. His research topics are social problems, violence, and social stratification. He is the author of Sociología del delito amateur (2004), La experiencia escolar fragmentada. Estudiantes y docentes en la escuela media en Buenos Aires (2002), El Sentimiento de Inseguridad. Sociología del temor al delito (2009); and co-author of La nueva pobreza en la Argentina (1995) and Neoliberalism and National Imagination (2005). He has edited Seguridad y Ciudadanía (2009) and co-edited Violencias, delitos y justicias en la Argentina (2002); Política social y acciones locales (2006) and Reconfiguraciones del mundo popular (2010).

Elena Mascova received her PhD in Sociology from the Université Paris Descartes in 2009. She was a lecturer from the Institut d’études politiques where while the present issue was in preparation. She is a member of the Research Group for a Europe of Culture and Solidarity (GEPECS) at the Université Paris Descartes. At present, she participates in a European research project entitled “Activating Senior Potential in Aging Europe” that aims to investigate different aspects of seniors citizens’ position in society.

María Mercedes Di Virgilio earned her PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. She is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. She coordinated the program in Urban Studies at the university’s Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani from 2005 to 2008. In 2009, she received a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to articles and book chapters on public policy and urban poverty in Argentina, she has written Hábitat y salud. Estrategias de las familias pobres (2003) and co-edited Gestión de la política social. Conceptos y herramientas (2009), La escuela y la educación sexual (2008), Gestión local en salud (2008), Políticas del hábitat, desigua­ldad y segregación socio-espacial en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires (2007) and Gestión social y municipios: Desde los escritorios del Banco Mundial a las calles del Gran Buenos Aires (2005).

Enrique Peruzzotti is a researcher at the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Torcuato Di Tella University in Argentina. He is a past John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (2009–10). He has published extensively on the politics of civil society and democratization in Latin America. He is co-editor of four volumes: Participatory Innovations and Representative Democracy in Latin America (2009), El Retorno del Pueblo. Populismo y Nuevas Democracias en América Latina (2008); Enforcing the Rule of Law. Social Accountability in Latin America (2006) and Controlando la Politica. Ciudadanos y Medios en las Nuevas Democracias Latinoamericanas (2002). His articles have been published in the Journal of Latin American Studies, the Journal of Democracy, Constellations, Citizenship Studies, and Global Governance. He has held numerous visiting positions during his career, including at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the University of London, the University of New Mexico, the Universidade Federal do Minas Gerais, the American University of Paris, and the Facultad Lationamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Ecuador. He has also been a resident fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center, and the Center for Civil Society at the London School of Economics.

Olga Ulturgasheva is a research fellow in Social Anthropology at Clare Hall and Research associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. She is working on the anthropology of childhood and youth in the Arctic. Her PhD research, which centered on Siberian Eveny children’s life experiences and how these are interpreted for their own childhoods and for their futures, has led to a larger comparative study across Arctic communities. She is currently involved as a co-principal investigator in a trans-disciplinary, multi-sited, international project entitled “Negotiating Pathways to Adulthood: Social Change and Indigenous Culture in Four Circumpolar Communities” run in collaboration with the Universities of Massachusetts, Fairbanks, and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is co-editor of Shamanism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood in the Shamanic Ecologies of Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Oxford; New York: Berghahn Books).

Oane Visser is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and ­Development Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, and is also affiliated with the Center for the Study of Transition and Development (CESTRAD) at the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague (both in the Netherlands). He conducts research on topics such as property and labor relations, social and business networks, and foreign investment in the Russian countryside, and also does comparative work within the former Soviet Union. He has published (co-authored) articles in journals including the Journal of Peasant Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Focaal–Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, and various edited volumes. He also lectures within the Departments of Sociology and Communication Sciences at Radboud University, in particular on qualitative research methods.

Svetlana Yaroshenko is associate professor in the Department of Comparative Sociology, Faculty of Sociology, Saint Petersburg State University. She has studied poverty, social exclusion, and new forms of solidarity in the post-socialist world from a gender perspective and through extended case studies. In different research projects in rural and urban spaces on the North of Russia during the 1990s she has tried to identify signs of poverty in everyday life after state socialism, in order to determine the reasons for the enormous numbers of “working poor” and ways which help them to escape from degradation and exclusion. Recently she has turned her research focus to expectations of social support and perceptions of socialism (as past experience and as ideals), and its development in collective activities and in social practices among young women and men across North/East/Central Europe, including Russia. Her PhD dissertation, defended in 1994, was entitled The Subculture of Poverty in American Sociology: Evolution of Theoretical Principles and Approaches.

© Laboratorium. 2010