| Abstract [eng] |
The research asked how the relationship between ethnicity and changing property regimes (from collective to private ownership) was structured in independent Lithuania by focusing on the case of the land restitution process in the state’s ethnically diverse south-eastern region. The main findings of this thesis are the following. Restitution was planned as a colour-blind process, in which every citizen was to receive justice in the form of having his or his family’s land, previously collectivized during the soviet period, restored to him. Despite ostensibly equal treatment, minorities lacked the equal resources necessary to participate in the restitution process. Equal treatment of unequal groups hampered minority members' efforts to get back their land. Moreover, analysis of the practical implementation of restitution demonstrated instances, albeit not systemic, of discrimination which members of the minority groups felt during the restitution process. In peoples’ accounts of the progress of the restitution process in SEL, these changes correspond to the multifarious shapes of ethnicity (ethnicity overlapping with such categories as localness and as kinship). However, the process of restitution was not seen by those who were seeking to have their land returned as primarily ethnically driven, though there were exceptions. Although the research found that ethnicity had an effect on the restitution process on a macro level, yet it also demonstrated that on a micro/personal level this effect may not be recognized. The thesis demonstrated that, as a result of the limited usage of ethnicity as a cognitive category to interpret and frame the restitution process, land restitution had a limited impact on reifying ethnic group boundaries in the region, as far as the participants of this research were concerned. |
