Download or read book Class Cultures in Post Socialist Eastern Europe written by Dražen Cepić and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the extent to which social class has changed in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism. Based on extensive original research, the book discusses how ideas about class are viewed by both working class and middle class people. The book examines how such people’s social identities are shaped by various factors including economic success, culture and friendship networks. The present class situation in Eastern Europe is contrasted to what prevailed in Communist times, when societies were officially classless, but nevertheless had Communist party elites.

Download or read book Class Cultures in Post Socialist Eastern Europe written by AZEN. CEPIC and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the extent to which social class has changed in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism. Based on extensive original research, the book discusses how ideas about class are viewed by both working class and middle class people. The book examines how such people's social identities are shaped by various factors including economic success, culture and friendship networks. The present class situation in Eastern Europe is contrasted to what prevailed in Communist times, when societies were officially classless, but nevertheless had Communist party elites.

Download or read book Politics in Color and Concrete written by Krisztina Fehérváry and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical anthropology of material transformations of homes in Hungary from the 1950s o the 1990s. Material culture in Eastern Europe under state socialism is remembered as uniformly gray, shabby, and monotonous—the worst of postwar modernist architecture and design. Politics in Color and Concrete revisits this history by exploring domestic space in Hungary from the 1950s through the 1990s and reconstructs the multi-textured and politicized aesthetics of daily life through the objects, spaces, and colors that made up this lived environment. Krisztina Féherváry shows that contemporary standards of living and ideas about normalcy have roots in late socialist consumer culture and are not merely products of postsocialist transitions or neoliberalism. This engaging study decenters conventional perspectives on consumer capitalism, home ownership, and citizenship in the new Europe. “A major reinterpretation of Soviet-style socialism and an innovative model for analyzing consumption.” —Katherine Verdery, The Graduate Center, City University of New York “Politics in Color and Concrete explains why the everyday is important, and shows why domestic aesthetics embody a crucially significant politics.” —Judith Farquhar, University of Chicago “The topic is extremely timely and relevant; the writing is lucid and thorough; the theory is complex and sophisticated without being overly dense, or daunting. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.” —Brad Weiss, College of William and Mary

Download or read book Socialist Cultures East and West written by Dubravka Juraga and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-06-30 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades of Western Cold War propaganda were designed to depict socialism as inimical to genuine aesthetic acheivement. Now, in the wake of the Cold War, it is becoming possible to reassess the past and present cultural productions of artists with socialist inclinations. The essays in this volume begin such a reassessment, finding that socialist cultural production in the 20th century, both as the official culture of the socialist East and as an oppositional culture in the capitalist West, has been rich and varied. The volume focuses on socialist culture in the industrialized world, primarily Eastern Europe and the West. An introductory essay overviews socialist cultural productions of the 20th century, while the chapters that follow address a wide range of topics. These include Soviet socialist realist fiction and film musicals, the socialist drama of Bertolt Brecht, and British and American leftist fiction. The volume demonstrates that propagandistic Cold War depictions of socialism as a threat to artistic expression were inaccurate and misleading.

Download or read book The Socialist Good Life written by Cristofer Scarboro and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “First-class, rigorously researched, richly documented, and thought-provoking” essays on the consumer experience in socialist Eastern Europe (Graham H. Roberts, author of Material Culture in Russia and the USSR). As communist regimes denigrated Western countries for widespread unemployment and consumer excess, socialist Eastern European states simultaneously legitimized their power through their apparent ability to satisfy consumers’ needs. Moving beyond binaries of production and consumption, the essays collected here examine the lessons consumption studies can offer about ethnic and national identity and the role of economic expertise in shaping consumer behavior. From Polish VCRs to Ukrainian fashion boutiques, tropical fruits in the GDR to cinemas in Belgrade, The Socialist Good Life explores what consumption means in a worker state where communist ideology emphasizes collective needs over individual pleasures.

Download or read book Getting by in Postsocialist Romania written by David A. Kideckel and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ethnographic study describes how Romanian industrial workers have fared since the end of socialism. The author finds fear and alienation due to their precarious job status, declining health and loss of a social safety net. Drawing on more than three decades of fieldwork he presents narratives from select individuals.

Download or read book Changing Economies and Changing Identities in Postsocialist Eastern Europe written by Ingo Schröder and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2008 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses class formation and changes in personhood in contemporary Eastern Europe in the context of the spread of a market economy. The authors investigate processes of social closure, marginalization and elite formation, paying particular attention to their cultural expressions and to the legitimizing discourses of nationalist and neoliberal agendas. While individual and collective identities are inextricably linked with the consolidation of global capitalism, external blueprints are everywhere mediated through historically grounded experiences and local social relations. Comprising studies from Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, the volume explores practices, stories, and performances in everyday life worlds. The ethnographies show both individual and collective identities to be emergent projects, constrained by economic processes and state policies but ultimately created by people themselves as they pursue their interests and search for meaning.

Download or read book Crises and Conflicts in Post Socialist Societies written by Heiko Pleines and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-socialist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe have been characterised by historically shaped crises and conflicts on all levels of political, economic and societal life. Minority and ethno-political conflicts, many of them currently at a stalemate, have severely hampered state-building and societal stability – and continue to do so. Contradictory interpretations of history prevent societies from forging a common identity and thus impede nation-building processes. Political and social identities exert an important influence on democratic and socioeconomic transformation processes. Taken together, the contributions in this volume reflect the wide variety of challenges and conflicts linked to ethnic, national, political, social and gender identities in post-socialist societies in Central and Eastern Europe. They not only serve to illustrate the significant differences among post-socialist transformations, but also highlight the variety of theoretical concepts and methodological approaches that can be used to analyse identity, its change and impact on societal developments.This book presents some of the best papers presented at the Changing Europe Summer School on “Crises and Conflicts in Eastern European States and Societies: Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones for Democratisation?“ held in Warsaw in September 2007.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Middle Class Politics and the Global Crisis in Eastern Europe written by Agnes Gagyi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to dominant narratives which portray East European politics as a pendulum swing between democracy and authoritarianism, conventionally defined in terms of an ahistorical cultural geography of East vs. West, this book analyzes post-socialist transformation as part of the long downturn of the post-WWII global capitalist cycle. Based on an empirical comparison of two countries with significantly different political regimes throughout the period, Hungary and Romania, this study shows how different constellations of successive late socialist and post-socialist regimes have managed internal and external class relations throughout the same global crisis process, from very similar positions of semi-peripheral, post-socialist systemic integration. Within this context, the book follows the role of social movements since the 1970s, paying attention both to the level of differences between local integration regimes and to the level of structural similarities of global integration. The analysis maintains a special focus on movements’ class composition and inter-class relationships and the specific position of middle-class politics in movements.

Download or read book Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union written by Charles Walker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. This book explores the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societies. Drawing upon original empirical research in a range of countries, the book's contributors explore the various freedoms and insecurities that have accompanied neo-liberal transformation in post-socialist countries - in spheres as diverse as consumption, migration, political participation, volunteering, employment and family formation - and examine the ways in which they have begun to re-shape different aspects of young people's lives. In addition, while 'social change' is a central theme of the issue, all of the chapters in the collection indicate that the new opportunities and risks faced by young people continue both to underpin and to be shaped by familiar social and spatial divisions, not only within and between the countries addressed, but also between 'East' and 'West'. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Youth Studies.

Download or read book The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia written by Dijana Jelača and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores the cultural life of capitalism during socialist and post-socialist times within the geopolitical context of the former Yugoslavia. Through a variety of cutting edge essays at the intersections of critical cultural studies, material culture, visual culture, neo-Marxist theories and situated critiques of neoliberalism, the volume rethinks the relationship between capitalism and socialism. Rather than treating capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive systems of political, social and economic order, the volume puts forth the idea that in the context of the former Yugoslavia, they are marked by a mutually intertwined existence not only on the economic level, but also on the level of cultural production and consumption. It argues that culture—although very often treated as secondary in the analyses of either socialism, capitalism or their relationship—has an important role in defining, negotiating, and resisting the social, political and economic values of both systems.

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 Making Capitalism Without Capitalists written by Gil Eyal and published by Verso. This book was released on 1998 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on the transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe since the 1980s, where capitalism was made without a capitalist class. This text reflects on the sociological characteristics of the Communist system and offers a theory of post-Communist societies.

Download or read book Post communist Nostalgia written by Maria Todorova and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

Download or read book Privatizing Poland written by Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition from socialism in Eastern Europe is not an isolated event, but part of a larger shift in world capitalism: the transition from Fordism to flexible (or neoliberal) capitalism. Using a blend of ethnography and economic geography, Elizabeth C. Dunn shows how management technologies like niche marketing, accounting, audit, and standardization make up flexible capitalism's unique form of labor discipline. This new form of management constitutes some workers as self-auditing, self-regulating actors who are disembedded from a social context while defining others as too entwined in social relations and unable to self-manage.Privatizing Poland examines the effects privatization has on workers' self-concepts; how changes in "personhood" relate to economic and political transitions; and how globalization and foreign capital investment affect Eastern Europe's integration into the world economy. Dunn investigates these topics through a study of workers and changing management techniques at the Alima-Gerber factory in Rzeszów, Poland, formerly a state-owned enterprise, which was privatized by the Gerber Products Company of Fremont, Michigan.Alima-Gerber instituted rigid quality control, job evaluation, and training methods, and developed sophisticated distribution techniques. The core principle underlying these goals and strategies, the author finds, is the belief that in order to produce goods for a capitalist market, workers for a capitalist enterprise must also be produced. Working side-by-side with Alima-Gerber employees, Dunn saw firsthand how the new techniques attempted to change not only the organization of production, but also the workers' identities. Her seamless, engaging narrative shows how the employees resisted, redefined, and negotiated work processes for themselves.

Download or read book Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe written by Irena Reifová and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-05 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key concepts of the book are media, class, poverty, and shaming. The contributors to this book examine how certain social relations and their cultural meanings in the media, namely class and poverty, are transformed into factual or moral attributes of people and situations. Class and poverty are not understood as certain things and actions, or concepts and numbers; both class and poverty are assumed to be, above all, particular social relationships or a set of relations between people, things and symbols. Without denying that contempt for the destitute Other is an affect found throughout history and in various socioeconomic contexts, the chapters in this book – through their concern with the mediated gaze on class – narrate predominantly the challenges brought about by the media’s spectacular take on poverty and low status as they (at least) coincide with the neoliberal era. This volume will be essential reading for the scholars specialising in the study of media and social inequalities form the vantage points of Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology or European Studies.

Download or read book The Crisis of Socialism in Europe written by Christiane Lemke and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revolutions in Eastern Europe and the recasting of socialism in Western Europe since 1989 have given rise to intense debate over the origins, character, and implications of the "crisis" of socialism. Is socialism in ideological, electoral, or organizational decline? Is the decline inevitable or can socialism be revitalized? This volume draws together historians and political scientists of Eastern and Western European politics to address these questions. The collection begins with an historical overview of socialism in Western Europe and moves toward the suggestion of a framework for a post-socialist discourse. Among the topics covered are: the birth and death of communism and a regime type in Eastern Europe; how different forms of national communism were smothered by Sovietization in the postwar period; the origins of revolutions in Eastern Europe; the potential for social democracy in Hungary; the role of the Left in a reunified German; and directions for the Left in general. Contributors. Geoff Eley, Konrad Jarausch, Herbert Kitschelt, Christiane Lemke, Andrei Markovits, Gary Marks, Wolfgang Merkel, Norman Naimark, Iván and Szonja Szelénya, Sharon Wolchik