DOI

10.1111/socf.12329

Abstract

As war challenges survival and social relations, how do actors alter and adapt dispositions and practices? To explore this question, I investigate women's perceptions of normal relations, practices, status, and gendered self in an intense situation of wartime survival, the Blockade of Leningrad (1941–1944), an 872-day ordeal that demographically feminized the city. Using Blockade diaries for data on everyday life, perceptions, and practices, I show how women's gendered skills and habits of breadseeking and caregiving (finding scarce resources and providing aid) were key to survival and helped elevate their sense of status. Yet this did not entice rethinking “gender.” To explore status elevation and gender entrenchment, I build on Bourdieu's theory of habitus and fields to develop anchors: field entities with valence around which actors orient identities and practices. Anchors provide support for preexisting habitus and practices, and filter perceptions from new positions vis-à-vis fields and concrete relations. Essentialist identities and practices were reinforced through two processes involving anchors. New status was linked to “women's work” that aided survival of anchors (close others, but also factories and the city), reinforcing acceptance of gender positions. Women perceived that challenging gender relations and statuses could risk well-being of anchors, reconstructing gender essentialism.

Document Type

Post-print Article

Publication Date

1-20-2016

Publisher Statement

Copyright © 2017 Eastern Sociological Society. Article first published online: 20 JAN 2017. DOI: 10.1111/socf.12329

The definitive version is available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/socf.12329/abstract

Full citation:

Hass, Jeffrey K. "Anchors, Habitus, and Practices Besieged by War: Women and Gender in the Blockade of Leningrad." Sociological Forum 32, no. 2 (January 20, 2017). doi:10.1111/socf.12329.

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