Scholar Spotlight: Marija Norkūnaitė

Marija Norkunaite is a Postdoctoral Associate affiliated with the European Studies Council and Baltic Studies. She has previously held positions as a Vilnius University Foundation junior research fellow at the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science. She is also a member and co-convenor of the European Association of Social Anthropologists’ Anthropology of Tax Network.

Tell us more about the path that brought you to Yale.

I am at Yale as a Joseph P. Kazickas Postdoctoral Associate in Baltic Studies. I first learned about the fellowship while finishing my doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, and, coincidentally, right as I was preparing a paper for a conference on Baltic Studies in Europe. I also knew several previous Kazickas fellows, some of whom are now my colleagues at the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science, so I had a clear sense of what a remarkable opportunity this was. 

I was excited to join the MacMillan Center for its interdisciplinary focus and regional diversity – it struck me as a wonderful environment for a young scholar to grow and engage with researchers from around the world. Having completed both my master’s and doctoral degrees in Area Studies, with a focus on Russian and East European Studies, I was also eager to experience an area studies department in a different institutional context. And of course, the fact that Yale has a Baltic Studies program was very important to me. I have been studying the Baltic countries for more than ten years – and it is also the region I come from – so the chance to be part of a community dedicated to the region felt both professionally and personally meaningful. 
 

What has your work as a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale entailed?

While at Yale, I have been working on publishing my doctoral research and developing a new research project. I have a forthcoming article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, which is also the basis for my upcoming talk. Another article I am working on explores the vernacular concept of khoziain, or householder, which I analyze as a desire for a more human(e) state. The new project builds on my work on citizenship and taxation, and looks at how the relationship between the two is being reconfigured amid a growing threat of war and ensuing remilitarization in Lithuania. I had a chance to present my initial ideas at the MacMillan Center Visiting Fellows’ Academic Exchanges. Finally, one of my favorite parts of being a postdoctoral associate at Yale is the opportunity to attend the many talks, seminars, and events at the MacMillan Center and across the university.

You're soon to give a talk called "Nationals through Tax: State-Society Relations in the Baltics through the Fiscal Lens." Can you tell us a little bit more about this research and what inspired it?

My talk is based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Sillamäe, Estonia and Daugavpils, Latvia. In the talk, I will show how my mainly Russian-speaking interlocutors used taxes to claim (full) membership in the Estonian and Latvian political collectives as good, deserving, and loyal citizens. I will also inquire into why and how taxes have become such a prevalent way for them to make claims against the state in Latvia and Estonia, and discuss how successful taxation is as a citizenship-making technique in the Baltics.

This talk – and the forthcoming article it is based on – is part of the larger project on the state- society relations among Russian-speaking communities in the Baltic States. In this project, I am interested in how my interlocutors perceive and come into a relationship with the state in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Much of the scholarly literature on Russian-speaking minorities in the region tends to focus on language and other cultural forms of belonging. Yet while language and culture were indeed important to my interlocutors, so were economy, taxes, or the environment, which has received less scholarly attention so far. As these topics emerged as significant parts of my interlocutors’ everyday lives and meaningful to their sense of belonging, this is precisely what I decided to focus on in my talk and in my research more broadly.

You're currently developing a book project, can you tell us anything about that?

The book project is based on my doctoral dissertation – an ethnographic study of the social contract between the state and society as imagined and lived by the mainly Russian-speaking residents of three former socialist towns: Visaginas in Lithuania, Daugavpils in Latvia, and Sillamäe in Estonia. I argue that for these residents, the social contract offers an ideal of an equal, fair, reciprocal, and perceivably apolitical relationship with the state that they yearn for, yet feel the lack of. The book explores the social contract my interlocutors desired, the social contract in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as they saw it, and the gap between the two. I also look at the forms of governance my interlocutors believed would allow them to achieve their ideal state-society relationship, and conceptualize this as their attempts to redefine both the membership criteria in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and the very political community of which they strive to become part of.

What has been a highlight of your time at Yale so far, and what's one thing you're looking forward to here?

Definitely the people I have met here and the many inspiring conversations and stimulating discussions I have been able to take part in. When I am not in my office at the MacMillan Center, I enjoy working at the Bass Library or exploring the various coffee shops around New Haven. With the long winter now finally over, I very much look forward to the cherries blossom on Wooster Square!