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Bruce O'Neill

Romania 2009

Thanks to a generous Travel and Research Grant from CREEES, I was able to complete 6 weeks of preliminary dissertation research on the entanglement of homelessness, urban space and ordinary affect in Bucharest, Romania.

This summer’s preliminary research demonstrated (to a surprising extent) that Bucharest’s shelter residents are observably and self-consciously bored (plictisit).  Historically, this observation would not amount to much for the anthropologist.  The existing social science literature insists that boredom is time idly spent.  There is little wonder, then, that ethnographers have avoided studying boredom, a time in which nothing appears to be happening.  Why would they?  Yet when examined spatially, I found that shelter boredom in Bucharest can be understood in an entirely new light.  Rather than the absence of something to do, a spatial approach suggests that boredom is a continual pull to do things, or to envision a range of things that one could or should be doing in particular places.  Moved by chronic boredom, shelter residents in and around Bucharest regularly imagine, plan and carry out projects in the hopes of becoming, for lack of a better word, un-bored.  My summer research, in response, pushes me to rethink boredom as activity (instead of inactivity) and spatially (instead of temporally) not only to advance anthropological literature on boredom but also to develop fresh insight into the relationships that exists between poverty, governance and affect in a post-socialist context.

With CREEES support, I was able to complete the following concrete objectives:

1. I reaffirmed existing relationships with the University of Bucharest forged as a 2007 Fulbright Scholar.  This involved meetings with professors and administrators from the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work.  I also expanded my academic network to include scholars from the Faculty of European Studies at Babeş-Bolyai University.  These meetings provided me with a web of scholarly contacts necessary to carry out my dissertation project.

2. I developed contacts inside the offices of the Director General for Social Assistance and Child Protection in Bucharest.  These offices are responsible for the implementation of social policy for Bucharest’s homeless population.  In particular, I met with mid-level bureaucrats, and I toured the sites where their social services are administered.  In the end, I received the necessary permission to conduct my dissertation research at these service sites. 

3. I reaffirmed my relationship with non-governmental organizations working with the homeless in Bucharest.  I also received the necessary permission to conduct ethnographic research at several NGO operated night shelters and day centers for the homeless. 

Because of CREEES’ generous support, I established the field sites and relationships necessary to begin my dissertation research immediately upon my return to Romania in this coming summer.  I am most grateful for CREEES support of my dissertation project and for making this invaluable preliminary research possible.  Thank you.