On the Social Life of Postsocialism

On the Social Life of Postsocialism PDF

Author: Daphne Berdahl

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0253221706

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Anthropologist Daphne Berdahl was one of the leading scholars of the transition from state socialism to capitalism in central and eastern Europe. From her pathbreaking ethnography of a former East German border village in the aftermath of German reunification, to her insightful analyses of consumption, nostalgia, and citizenship in the early 21st century, Berdahl's writings probe the contradictions, paradoxes, and ambiguities of postsocialism as few observers have done. This volume brings together her essays, from an early study of memory at the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C., to research on consumption and citizenship undertaken in Leipzig in the years before her untimely death. It serves as a superb introduction to the development of the field of postsocialist cultural studies.

Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow

Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow PDF

Author: Olga Shevchenko

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2008-12-17

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0253002575

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this ethnography of postsocialist Moscow in the late 1990s, Olga Shevchenko draws on interviews with a cross-section of Muscovites to describe how people made sense of the acute uncertainties of everyday life, and the new identities and competencies that emerged in response to these challenges. Ranging from consumption to daily rhetoric, and from urban geography to health care, this study illuminates the relationship between crisis and normality and adds a new dimension to the debates about postsocialist culture and politics.

Everyday Post-Socialism

Everyday Post-Socialism PDF

Author: Jeremy Morris

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1349950890

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Food & Everyday Life in the Postsocialist World

Food & Everyday Life in the Postsocialist World PDF

Author: Melissa L. Caldwell

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 025335384X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Across the Soviet Union and eastern Europe during the socialist period, food emerged as a symbol of both the successes and failures of socialist ideals of progress, equality, and modernity. By the late 1980s, the arrival of McDonald's behind the Iron Curtain epitomized the changes that swept across the socialist world. Not quite two decades later, the effects of these arrivals were evident in the spread of foreign food corporations and their integration into local communities. This book explores the role played by food--as commodity, symbol, and sustenance--in the transformation of life in Russia and eastern Europe since the end of socialism. Changes in food production systems, consumption patterns, food safety, and ideas about health, well-being, nationalism, and history provide useful perspectives on the meaning of the postsocialist transition for those who lived through it.

Ambiguous Transitions

Ambiguous Transitions PDF

Author: Jill Massino

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1785335995

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and citizenship postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill Massino illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women’s roles, relationships, and identities. Analyzing women as subjects and agents, the book examines how they negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. Massino concludes by exploring the ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the past have shaped politics and women’s lived experiences since 1989.

Creating Social Trust in Post-Socialist Transition

Creating Social Trust in Post-Socialist Transition PDF

Author: J. Kornai

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-06-25

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1403980667

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Beneficial social and economic exchange relies on a certain level of trust. But trust is a delicate matter, not least in the former socialist countries where illegitimate behaviour by governments made distrust a habit. The chapters in this volume analyze the causes and the effects of the lack of social trust in post-socialist countries. The contributions originated in the Collegium Budapest project on Honesty and Trust: Theory and Experience in the Light of the Post-Socialist Transition. A second volume entitled, Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition , is being published simultaneously.

Disability and Postsocialism

Disability and Postsocialism PDF

Author: Teodor Mladenov

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138234468

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book examines the commodification of labour and overvaluation of economic efficiency along with its influence on disability policy and disabled people. It illuminates continuities between state socialism and postsocialist capitalism, providing a broad critique of contemporary neoliberalism and its impact on individual and collective life.

Remains of Socialism

Remains of Socialism PDF

Author: Maya Nadkarni

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1501750194

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Remains of Socialism, Maya Nadkarni investigates the changing fates of the socialist past in postsocialist Hungary. She introduces the concept of "remains"—both physical objects and cultural remainders—to analyze all that Hungarians sought to leave behind after the end of state socialism. Spanning more than two decades of postsocialist transformation, Remains of Socialism follows Hungary from the optimism of the early years of transition to its recent right-wing turn toward illiberal democracy. Nadkarni analyzes remains that range from exiled statues of Lenin to the socialist-era "Bambi" soda, and from discredited official histories to the scandalous secrets of the communist regime's informers. She deftly demonstrates that these remains were far more than simply the leftovers of an unwanted past. Ultimately, the struggles to define remains of socialism and settle their fates would represent attempts to determine the future—and to mourn futures that never materialized.

The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia

The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia PDF

Author: Dijana Jelača

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 3319474820

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes