New Lithuania in Old Hands: Effects and Outcomes of EUropeanization in Rural Lithuania

Based on detailed ethnographic material, ‘New Lithuania in Old Hands’ analyzes the impact that European Union membership has had upon the country’s ageing small-scale farmers. Addressing the highly relevant themes of European Union enlargement and the ‘Return to Europe’, this book describes how Lithuania’s EU membership has been a far cry from the scenarios of wealth and overabundance once promised. Rather, the text details the agrarian sector’s recent movement towards subsistence production, increased insecurity and a reinforcement of kinship obligations, and acknowledges that it is the country’s ageing ‘Soviet generation’ – as opposed to its political elite – that has brought into effect the restructuring of the agricultural sector in the wake of Lithuania’s EU accession.