Katherine Verdery: Brushing aside the ideological curtain

Abstract

This contribution highlights one of Katherine Verdery’s strengths as an anthropologist: her ability to recognize and penetrate foundational ideological formations to analyze the sociocultural dynamics at play. The ideological formations she has deciphered range from nationalism and ethnic identity, the intellectual pillars reinforcing the legitimacy of the Romanian Communist Party, the fantasy of get-rich schemes in capitalist imaginaries, to the illusions of neoliberal claims about property ownership and civil society. Examples illustrating her technique are drawn from four significant publications: Transylvanian villagers, National ideology under socialism, “Faith, hope, and caritas in the land of pyramids, Romania, 1990–1994,” and The vanishing hectare.