Download or read book American Representations of Post Communism written by Andaluna Borcila and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the televised events of 1989, territories of Eastern and Central Europe that had been marked as impenetrable and inaccessible to the Western gaze exploded into visibility. As the narratives of the Cold War crumbled, new narratives emerged and new geographies were produced on and by American television. Using an understudied archive of American news broadcasts, and tracing their flashes and echoes through travel guides and narratives of return written by Eastern European-Americans, this book explores American ways of seeing and mapping communism’s disintegration and the narratives articulated around post-communist sites and subjects.
Download or read book Post Communist Party Systems written by Herbert Kitschelt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-08-13 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines democratic party competition in four post-communist polities in the 1990s. The work illustrates developments regarding different voter appeal of parties, patterns of voter representation, and dispositions to join other parties in alliances. Wider groups of countries are also compared.
Download or read book Post Communist Aesthetics written by Anca M. Pusca and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Anca Pusca seeks to extend the aesthetic and cultural turn in international relations to an analysis of post-communist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. Building on the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Ranciere, the work investigates how post-communist film, photography, theatre, art, museumization and architecture have creatively re-engaged with ideas of revolution, communism, capitalism and ethnic violence, and how this in turn has helped people survive and reinvent themselves amongst the material and ideological ruins of communism. The work illustrates how popular culture has effectively targeted and re-interpreted the classical representations of the transition in order to question: • The origin – focusing on practices of re-staging, memorializing and questioning the 1989 revolutions. • The unfolding – focusing on the human and material consequences of significant changes in processes of production and consumption. • The potential end – focusing on the illusions and disillusions surrounding the 'transition' process. A unique take on the influence that popular culture has had and continues to have on how we understand the post-communist transitions, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of cultural and visual studies, eastern European politics and international relations.
Download or read book Communism s Shadow written by Grigore Pop-Eleches and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Download or read book Radical Representations written by Barbara Foley and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revisionary study, Barbara Foley challenges prevalent myths about left-wing culture in the Depression-era U.S. Focusing on a broad range of proletarian novels and little-known archival material, the author recaptures an important literature and rewrites a segment of American cultural history long obscured and distorted by the anti-Communist bias of contemporaries and critics. Josephine Herbst, William Attaway, Jack Conroy, Thomas Bell and Tillie Olsen, are among the radical writers whose work Foley reexamines. Her fresh approach to the U.S. radicals' debates over experimentalism, the relation of art to propaganda, and the nature of proletarian literature recasts the relation of writers to the organized left. Her grasp of the left's positions on the "Negro question" and the "woman question" enables a nuanced analysis of the relation of class to race and gender in the proletarian novel. Moreover, examining the articulation of political doctrine in different novelistic modes, Foley develops a model for discussing the interplay between politics and literary conventions and genres. Radical Representations recovers a literature of theoretical and artistic value meriting renewed attention form those interested in American literature, American studies, the U. S. left, and cultural studies generally.
Download or read book Postcommunist Film Russia Eastern Europe and World Culture written by Lars Kristensen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A post-communist condition has arisen from the fall of the Berlin Wall and later the Soviet Empire: this book looks at how this condition has manifested itself globally in the production of post-communist film. It argues post-communism is a shared experience on a geopolitical level, unlimited by national state borders, and examines post-communist cross culturalism and global totalitarianism within film. The book examines different national cinemas and dissimilar cinematic modes - from Russian blockbuster cinema to Chinese independent cinema; from Serbian city films to revolutionary films of Mozambique - all formulated as within the postcommunist condition. It considers the postcommunist film in terms of transnational and World cinema. It covers a wide range of films from small and independent filmmaking to mainstream, popular cinema, and explains post-communist signifiers as manifested in visual culture both inside and outside former, and current, communist countries.
Download or read book Art and Democracy in Post Communist Europe written by Piotr Piotrowski and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Eastern Europe saw a new era begin, and the widespread changes that followed extended into the world of art. Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe examines the art created in light of the profound political, social, economic, and cultural transformations that occurred in the former Eastern Bloc after the Cold War ended. Assessing the function of art in post-communist Europe, Piotr Piotrowski describes the changing nature of art as it went from being molded by the cultural imperatives of the communist state and a tool of political propaganda to autonomous work protesting against the ruling powers. Piotrowski discusses communist memory, the critique of nationalism, issues of gender, and the representation of historic trauma in contemporary museology, particularly in the recent founding of contemporary art museums in Bucharest, Tallinn, and Warsaw. He reveals the anarchistic motifs that had a rich tradition in Eastern European art and the recent emergence of a utopian vision and provides close readings of many artists—including Ilya Kavakov and Krzysztof Wodiczko—as well as Marina Abramovic’s work that responded to the atrocities of the Balkans. A cogent investigation of the artistic reorientation of Eastern Europe, this book fills a major gap in contemporary artistic and political discourse.
Download or read book Elections Parties and Representation in Post Communist Europe written by F. Millard and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elections, Parties and Representation in Post-Communist Europe 1990-2002 stresses the ways in which the development of political parties affected the quality of democracy, the nature of political representation, and political accountability in the early stages of post-communist politics. It also analyzes the nature and consequences of the corpus of parliamentary candidates and deputies for the representation of social classes, women and minorities. In contrast with the wide social profile of communist parliaments, politics largely became the playground of new highly educated male elites.
Download or read book Post Communist Democracies and Party Organization written by Margit Tavits and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of post-communist politics often argue that parties in new democracies lack strong organizations - sizable membership, local presence, and professional management - because they do not need them to win elections and they may hinder a party's flexibility and efficiency in office. Post-Communist Democracies and Party Organization explains why some political parties are better able than others to establish themselves in new democracies and why some excel at staying unified in parliament, whereas others remain dominated by individuals. Focusing on the democratic transitions in post-communist Europe from 1990 to 2010, Margit Tavits demonstrates that the successful establishment of a political party in a new democracy crucially depends on the strength of its organization. Yet not all parties invest in organization development. This book uses data from ten post-communist democracies, including detailed analysis of parties in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Poland.
Download or read book Visual Rhetorics of Communist Romania written by Adriana Cordali and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visual Rhetorics of Communist Romania: Life under the Totalitarian Gaze offers personal accounts and theoretical insight into the Cold War era when little information about life beyond the Iron Curtain could transpire to the West. Adriana Cordali develops a unique visual rhetorical theory for analyzing communist totalitarian propaganda and the resistance to it, and reveals the deliberate, strategic in/visibilities the rhetoric of power engaged in. Building upon the local history, ideology, and politics of the regime imposed after WWII, she identifies propaganda’s rhetorical features, visual tropes, and symbols and examines striking photographs and print materials from Ceaușescu’s regime (1966-1989) and the time of regime change (1989-1990), as well as an award-winning Romanian film that depicts women’s life at the time. Converging visual rhetoric and culture with history and politics, Visual Rhetorics of Communist Romania is a first book of this kind and will interest readers of rhetoric and communication, visual rhetoric, and political discourse in the region.
Download or read book Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture written by Vedrana Veličković and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe provides a comprehensive study of the way in which contemporary writers, filmmakers, and the media have represented the recent phenomenon of Eastern European migration to the UK and Western Europe following the enlargement of the EU in the 21st century, the social and political changes after the fall of communism, and the Brexit vote. Exploring the recurring figures of Eastern Europeans as a new reservoir of cheap labour, the author engages with a wide range of both mainstream and neglected authors, films, and programmes, including Rose Tremain, John Lanchester, Marina Lewycka, Polly Courtney, Dubravka Ugrešić, Kapka Kassabova, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Mike Phillips, It’s a Free World, Gypo, Britain’s Hardest Workers, The Poles are Coming, and Czech Dream. Analyzing the treatment of Eastern Europeans as builders, fruit pickers, nannies, and victims of sex trafficking, and ways of resisting the stereotypes, this is an important intervention into debates about Europe, migration, and postcommunist transition to capitalism, as represented in multiple contemporary cultural texts.
Download or read book Writing Postcommunism written by D. Williams and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-16 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving through the elegiac ruins of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav disintegration, Writing Postcommunism explores literary evocations of the pervasive disappointment and mourning that have marked the postcommunist twilight.
Download or read book Learning Gender after the Cold War written by Ioana Cîrstocea and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role and place of feminist politics in the transformation of the former socialist world and points out the geopolitical mechanisms involved in the deployment of technocratic norms, expert discourses, activist repertoires and academic knowledge on women’s rights and gender equality in the 1990s-2000s. Based on an interdisciplinary approach and scrutinizing transnational flows of people, resources and ideas, the analysis brings together themes and spaces that have been disconnected in previous scholarship. It sheds light on the integration of feminist resources into contemporary governance through complex entanglements of international aid to democratization, “activism beyond borders” and systemic transformation of higher education.The book will be of interest to researchers and students of sociology, political science, gender studies, and East-European studies.
Download or read book Journeys into Terror written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since ancient times, explorers and adventurers have captured popular imagination with their frightening narratives of travels gone wrong. Usually, these stories heavily feature the exotic or unknown, and can transform any journey into a nightmare. Stories of such horrific happenings have a long and rich history that stretches from folktales to contemporary media narratives.This work presents eighteen essays that explore the ways in which these texts reflect and shape our fear and fascination surrounding travel, posing new questions about the "geographies of evil" and how our notions of "terrible places" and their inhabitants change over time. The volume's five thematic sections offer new insights into how power, privilege, uncanny landscapes, misbegotten quests, hellish commutes and deadly vacations can turn our travels into terror.
Download or read book Meandering in Transition written by Ostap Kushnir and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection addresses the dynamics of the post-Communist transition in Central Eastern Europe. Its contributors present a detailed analysis of the events unfolding during the last three decades in the region, focusing in particular on identity-building processes and reforms in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The contributors outline reasons why some of these states accomplished a decisive break with the Communist past and became members of European and transatlantic structures, while some opted for pseudo-transition and fostered hybrid political regimes, jeopardizing their genuine integration with the West. A group of states which decided to preserve their Communist legacy is also explained. The collection describes and scrutinizes the formation of geopolitical affiliations and the evolution of discourses of belonging. It also traces the fluctuating dynamics of national decision-making and institution-building, as many of the post-Communist states reconsider and re-elaborate their initial ideas and visions of Europe today. Finally, the collection brings to light the rapidly changing perceptions of the region by the major global actors—the European Union, People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, and others.
Download or read book Democracy and Its Alternatives written by Richard Rose and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998-10-16 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of Communism has created the opportunity for democracy to spread from Prague to the Baltic and Black Seas. But the alternatives—dictatorship or totalitarian rule—are more in keeping with the traditions of Central Europe. And for many post-Communist societies, democracy has come to be associated with inflation, unemployment, crime, and corruption. Is it still true, then, as Winston Churchill suggested a half-century ago, that people will accept democracy with all its faults—because it is better than anything else? To find out, political scientists Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Christian Haerpfer examine evidence from post-Communist societies in eastern Europe. Drawing on data from public opinion and exit polls, election results, and interviews, the authors present testable hypotheses regarding regime change, consolidation, and prospects for stabilization. The authors point out that the abrupt transition to democracy in post-Communist countries is normal; gradual evolution in the Anglo-American way is the exception to the rule. While most recent books on democratization focus on Latin America and, to some extent, Asia, the present volume offers a unique look at the process currently under way in nine eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Despite the many problems these post-Communist societies are experiencing in making the transition to a more open and democratic polity, the authors conclude that a little democracy is better than no democracy at all.
Download or read book Intimacy on the Internet written by Lauren Rosewarne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this book is on the media representations of the use of the Internet in seeking intimate connections—be it a committed relationship, a hook-up, or a community in which to dabble in fringe sexual practices. Popular culture (film, narrative television, the news media, and advertising) present two very distinct pictures of the use of the Internet as related to intimacy. From news reports about victims of online dating, to the presentation of the desperate and dateless, the perverts and the deviants, a distinct frame for the intimacy/Internet connection is negativity. In some examples however, a changing picture is emerging. The ubiquitousness of Internet use today has meant a slow increase in comparatively more positive representations of successful online romances in the news, resulting in more positive-spin advertising and a more even-handed presence of such liaisons in narrative television and film. Both the positive and the negative media representations are categorised and analysed in this book to explore what they reveal about the intersection of gender, sexuality, technology and the changing mores regarding intimacy.
