Caring Like a State

"If you think of demographic expertise as a niche topic, think again. Leykin's book pulls at the thread of popular anxieties about population decline in Russia to unravel a story about state power and the national body, of care and political subjectivity, and of the experts' role in society. At the bottom of it all is the question of care: what does the state owe its citizens, and what do the citizens owe their state? This is an essential - and unsettling - book for our troubled political moment." - Olga Shevchenko, author of Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow "In her fascinating book, Caring Like a State, anthropologist Inna Leykin offers a pioneering political ethnography, shedding important new light on the centrality of issues of low fertility, high mortality, and migration in Russian politics past and present. A book to be enjoyed and to learn from." - David Kertzer, author of The Pope at War "Caring Like a State is a significant and unique study that examines the logics and practices surrounding Russia's long-perceived demographic crisis, an issue at the core of Putin's politics and efforts to regain legitimacy in the aftermath of the Soviet era and first post-Soviet decade. . . . Inna Leykin goes beyond the analysis of professional demographers' knowledge construction and the state policies they help design to examine how everyday familial practices are shaped by state population discourses, policies, and their own historical and cultural commitments. This book will make a major contribution to both the study of Russia and our understandings of the political and social work of demographic knowledge and politics in the contemporary world." - Michele Rivkin-Fish, author of Unmaking Russia's Abortion Culture: Family Planning and the Struggle for a Liberal Biopolitics