CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Curlin, Viktorija |
|---|---|
| Title | Transgender Community of Ljubljana: An Ethnographic Case Study of Community-building |
| Summary | Gender and sexuality have been some of the key sites of political and cultural contestation in formerly socialist states over the past three decades. Integration of these countries into the capitalist world economy and into the European Union has created cultural tensions. The question of transgender (and LGBT+ in general) persons’ place in society, and related accommodations in legal and medical systems regarding gender identity and medical transitioning, has emerged as a salient location of political discourse on national identity, political reform, and geopolitical relations. Slovenia was chosen for the case study because of its unique situation: the country boasts the oldest tradition of gay and lesbian organising; it generally ranks high in surveys on legal rights and social inclusion of the LGBT population; but it also has a complicated relationship with progressive feminist and LGBT+ activism. Studying the country’s transgender population, conceived here in the broadest sense of the term as ‘non-cisgender persons’, promises to provide insights into formation of both individual and the collective identity of sexual and gender minorities, as well as into complications that arise as different imaginaries of community—given Slovenia’s aforementioned cultural and geopolitical context—come into conflict. The fundamental research questions underpinning the project from have been: is there such a thing as a transgender ‘community’? By which academic conception of community can it be said to exist, if it indeed does exist? Who is seen to constitute it, and who is excluded? And what is the substance of its communion; what brings individuals into relations of community? The data presented in the analytical chapters was gathered during 2021 and 2022, the bulk of which is drawn from the four weeks of participant observation in Ljubljana between 28th May and 26th June, and from in-depth interviews with eleven participants. Remainder of the data was collected from the internet in the form of digital ethnography. The choice of the ethnographic method was a practical one, due to my prior academic training in anthropology and ethnology, but also because it was considered well-suited to the kind of knowledge production sought in gender studies scholarship. Social movement theory, Benedict Anderson’s concept of imaginary communities, Barbara H. Rosenwein’s emotional communities, and Roberto Esposito’s ideas of communitas and immunitas are all utilised to explore different facets of the community as it is described in ethnographic data. The central thesis of the work is that the transgender community of Ljubljana displays properties of a social movement community, but that its nature of an imaginary community is more salient. Building on this imaginary, it is conceived as an emotional community, organised around the central idea of ‘trans joy’, and the imperative of inclusion. |
| Supervisor | Renkin, Hadley Z.; Helms, Elissa |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/curlin_viktorija.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University