Download or read book Surviving Post Socialism written by Sue Bridger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on survival strategies developed at local levels in response to changing cultural, political and economic structures in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. An interdisciplinary approach is adopted as the contributors engage with questions of gender, ethnicity, migration, nationalism, employment and labour patterns and changing family structures.
Download or read book Last Exit to Utopia written by Jean-François Revel and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An English translation of Jean-Francois Revel's 1999 essay in which he examines the response of French intellectuals to the collapse of Soviet communism in the decade after its end.
Download or read book Surviving Post communism written by Kenneth Roberts and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do young people survive in the era of high unemployment, persistent economic crises and poor living standards that characterize post-communist society in the former Soviet Union? This work demonstrates how young people have managed to maintain optimism despite the very severe economic and social problems that beset the countries of the former Soviet Union. It reveals that in spite of all the hardship, the majority prefer the new uncertainties, and the merest prospect of the Western way of life, to the old guarantees.
Download or read book After Socialism written by Gabriel Kolko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a major contribution to contemporarary social and political thought written by one of the world's leading critical historians. Gabriel Kolko asks the difficult questions about where the left can go in a post-Cold War world where neoliberal policies appear to have triumphed in both the West and the former Soviet bloc.
Download or read book We Are Cuba written by Helen Yaffe and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and activists, this book tells for the first time the remarkable story of how Cuba survived while the rest of the Soviet bloc crumbled. Yaffe shows how Cuba has been gradually introducing select market reforms. While the government claims that these are necessary to sustain its socialist system, many others believe they herald a return to capitalism. Examining key domestic initiatives including the creation of one of the world’s leading biotechnological industries, its energy revolution, and medical internationalism alongside recent economic reforms, Yaffe shows why the revolution will continue post-Castro. This is a fresh, compelling account of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the challenges it faces today.
Download or read book Surviving Post Socialism written by Colin Williams and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper evaluates the coping practices adopted by households in East-Central Europe following the collapse of the socialist bloc. Drawing upon the New Democracies Barometer (NDB) survey, it is here revealed that although a common assumption is that post-socialist societies have undergone a transition to greater reliance on the market, an analysis of household coping practices provides little evidence that this is widely the case. Instead, households in most post-socialist societies continue to rely heavily on a multiplicity of economic practices in order to secure their livelihoods with little, if any, shift over time towards the use of the formal economy in general and the market in particular. The outcome is a call for recognition and appreciation of the heterogeneous economic practices being used by households in East-Central Europe and for greater consideration to be given to the contributions of the informal sector in securing livelihoods.
Download or read book Socialism Seriously written by Danny Katch and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2015-08-09 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Katch has done the impossible: he makes socialism sexy . . . eye-opening, inspiring, and funny . . . this book might turn you into a closet socialist” (Judah Friedlander, actor and comedian). Opinion polls show that many people in the United States prefer socialism to capitalism. But after being declared dead and buried for decades, socialism has come to mean little more than something vaguely less cruel and stupid than what we have now. That’s not exactly going to inspire millions to storm the barricades. Danny Katch brings together the two great Marxist traditions of Karl and Groucho to provide an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics, and the potential of human beings to be something more than being bomb-dropping, planet-destroying racist fools. “The most hilarious book about socialism since Karl Marx and his brother Harpo wrote their joke book.” —Hari Kondabolu, filmmaker and comedian “If The Communist Manifesto and America’s Funniest Home Videos had a baby, it would be Danny Katch’s new book. It’s a hilarious and fun way to think about what’s wrong with our world, how it could be different, and how we might get there. Keep an extra copy of Socialism . . . Seriously in your bag and hand it to the next person who asks you what socialism is all about; as long as that person is not your boss . . . seriously.” —Brian Jones, actor, educator, and activist “A lighthearted, easy read that packs an intro course on socialism into a short volume. With jokes that made me laugh out loud, and a lot of heart. Socialism is for lovers. Indeed.” —Sarah Jaffe, Belabored podcast host
Download or read book Globalization Under and After Socialism written by Besnik Pula and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe have gone from being among the world's most closed, autarkic economies to being some of the most export-oriented and globally integrated. While previous accounts have attributed this shift to post-1989 market reform policies, Besnik Pula sees the root causes differently. Reaching deeper into the region's history and comparatively examining its long-run industrial development, he locates critical junctures that forced the hands of Central and Eastern European elites and made them look at options beyond the domestic economy and the socialist bloc. In the 1970s, Central and Eastern European socialist leaders intensified engagements with the capitalist West in order to expand access to markets, technology, and capital. This shift began to challenge the Stalinist developmental model in favor of exports and transnational integration. A new reliance on exports launched the integration of Eastern European industry into value chains that cut across the East-West political divide. After 1989, these chains proved to be critical gateways to foreign direct investment and circuits of global capitalism. This book enriches our understanding of a regional shift that began well before the fall of the wall, while also explaining the distinct international roles that Central and Eastern European states have assumed in the globalized twenty-first century.
Download or read book Socialist Heritage written by Emanuela Grama and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on Romania from 1945 to 2016, Socialist Heritage explores the socialist state's attempt to create its own heritage, as well as the legacy of that project. Contrary to arguments that the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe aimed to erase the pre-war history of the socialist cities, Emanuela Grama shows that the communist state in Romania sought to exploit the past for its own benefit. The book traces the transformation of a central district of Bucharest, the Old Town, from a socially and ethnically diverse place in the early 20th century, into an epitome of national history under socialism, and then, starting in the 2000s, into the historic center of a European capital. Under socialism, politicians and professionals used the district's historic buildings, especially the ruins of a medieval palace discovered in the 1950s, to emphasize the city's Romanian past and erase its ethnically diverse history. Since the collapse of socialism, the cultural and economic value of the Old Town has become highly contested. Bucharest's middle class has regarded the district as a site of tempting transgressions. Its poor residents have decried their semi-decrepit homes, while entrepreneurs and politicians have viewed it as a source of easy money. Such arguments point to recent negotiations about the meanings of class, political participation, and ethnic and economic belonging in today's Romania. Grama's rich historical and ethnographic research reveals the fundamentally dual nature of heritage: every search for an idealized past relies on strategies of differentiation that can lead to further marginalization and exclusion.
Download or read book Everyday Post Socialism written by Jeremy Morris and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a rich ethnographic account of blue-collar workers’ everyday life in a central Russian industrial town coping with simultaneous decline and the arrival of transnational corporations. Everyday Post-Socialism demonstrates how people manage to remain satisfied, despite the crisis and relative poverty they faced after the fall of socialist projects and the social trends associated with neoliberal transformation. Morris shows the ‘other life’ in today’s Russia which is not present in mainstream academic discourse or even in the media in Russia itself. This book offers co-presence and a direct understanding of how the local community lives a life which is not only bearable, but also preferable and attractive when framed in the categories of ‘habitability’, commitment and engagement, and seen in the light of alternative ideas of worth and specific values. Topics covered include working-class identity, informal economy, gender relations and transnational corporations.
Download or read book Heaven on Earth written by Joshua Muravchik and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The search for the Promised Land took socialists in diverse directions: revolution, communes and kibbutzim, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third Worldism. But none of these paths led to the prophesied utopia. Nowhere did socialists succeed in creating societies of easy abundance or in midwifing the birth of a "New Man," as their theory promised. Some socialist governments abandoned their grandiose goals and satisfied themselves with making slight modifications to capitalism, while others plowed ahead doggedly, often inducing staggering human catastrophes. Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in the 1990s in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls, collapsing regimes and frantic revisions of doctrine."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Our Daily Bread written by Kate Transchel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on newly available archival materials including official documents, reports, and personal accounts, this remarkable study presents a detailed picture of the living standards of various social groups in prewar Soviet Russia, and the role of state-controlled distribution of food and goods as a tool of the Stalinist dictatorship. The study offers a new perspective not only on the period of collectivization, industrialization, and terror but also on the regime's most rudimentary method of controlling human behavior and reshaping the social order. In her conclusion the author analyzes the long-term impacts of the Stalinist "dictatorship of distribution", from bureaucratization to rural depopulation to the emergence of a distinctive type of black-market economy.
Download or read book Seasoned Socialism written by Anastasia Lakhtikova and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seasoned Socialism considers the relationship between gender and food in late Soviet daily life. Political and economic conditions heavily influenced Soviet life and foodways during this period and an exploration of Soviet women’s central role in the daily sustenance for their families as well as the obstacles they faced on this quest offers new insights into intergenerational and inter-gender power dynamics of that time. Food, both in its quality and quantity, was a powerful tool in the Soviet Union. This collection features work by scholars in an array of fields including cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, history, and food studies, and the work gathered here explores the intersection of gender, food, and culture in the post-1960s Soviet context. From personal cookbooks to gulag survival strategies, Seasoned Socialism considers gender construction and performance across a wide array of primary sources, including poetry, fiction, film, women’s journals, oral histories, and interviews. This collection provides fresh insight into how the Soviet government sought to influence both what citizens ate and how they thought about food.
Download or read book Ethical Eating in the Postsocialist and Socialist World written by Yuson Jung and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-02-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current discussions of the ethics around alternative food movements--concepts such as "local," "organic," and "fair trade"--tend to focus on their growth and significance in advanced capitalist societies. In this groundbreaking contribution to critical food studies, editors Yuson Jung, Jakob A. Klein, and Melissa L. Caldwell explore what constitutes "ethical food" and "ethical eating" in socialist and formerly socialist societies. With essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers, this politically nuanced volume offers insight into the origins of alternative food movements and their place in today's global economy. Collectively, the essays cover discourses on food and morality; the material and social practices surrounding production, trade, and consumption; and the political and economic power of social movements in Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Lithuania, Russia, and Vietnam. Scholars and students will gain important historical and anthropological perspective on how the dynamics of state-market-citizen relations continue to shape the ethical and moral frameworks guiding food practices around the world.
Download or read book The Socialism Survival Guide written by Buck Sexton and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Global Geographies of Post Socialist Transition written by Tassilo Herrschel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the formal raising of the Iron Curtain, there has been much interest in post-socialism and the process of post-socialist transition. This timely book provides a systematic review and analysis of the process of ‘transition’. Herrschel: explores recent theories, concepts and debates on post-socialism and the notion of transition provides a systematic, topical account of post-socialist transitions around the world, as evidence by social, economic, and political processes examines case studies of post-socialist transition in east and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and South-East Asia, and Africa and Latin America brings together theoretical and practical aspects by examining what lessons can be learned from recent experiences. Global Geographies of Post-Socialist Transition provides a truly global comparative account of the meaning and processes of post-socialist transition and will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in this area.
Download or read book Gender Equality and Difference During And After State Socialism written by R. Kay and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender, Equality and Difference During and After State Socialism examines gender as a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon which is influential in and influenced by state-led policies and structures, as well as social practices and relations and which shapes the experiences and lives of women and men.
