Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia

✍ Scribed by Chris M. Hann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 358
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Social scientists did not predict the collapse of the socialist system in 1989-91 and their attempts to explain postsocialism have not been comprehensive. Economic disintegration and political instability have been documented, but the deeper causes have often gone unnoticed. Consequently the solutions proffered, such as the promotion of non-governmental organisations as the foundations of 'civil society', have so far brought little success.Postsocialism presents, for the first time, the anthropological responses to these problems which are all grounded in intensive fieldwork. The authors demonstrate that even when local conditions are specific, the view 'from below' illuminates macro trends. A wide range of topics are discussed, including:the role of social and cultural capital in determining the 'winners' of rural decollectivizationthe devaluation of blue collar labourthe position of Gypsiesthe viability of 'multicultural' models in situations of religious differences and ethnic violencenew patterns of consumption in Chinathe revival of rituals and the healing of socialist 'trauma'. _

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Notes on contributors......Page 10
Preface and acknowledgements......Page 12
Introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation......Page 14
Social capital, trust and legitimacy......Page 42
The advantages of being collectivized: cooperative farm managers in the postsocialist economy......Page 44
Economic crisis and ritual decline in Eastern Europe......Page 70
The social production of mistrust......Page 87
Dimensions of inequality: gender, class and 'underclass'......Page 106
Retreat to the household? Gendered domains in postsocialist Poland......Page 108
The unmaking of an East-Central European working class......Page 127
Deprivation, the Roma and 'the underclass'......Page 146
Violent histories and the renewal of identities......Page 170
Intolerant sovereignties and 'multi-multi' protectorates: competition over religious sites and (in)tolerance in the Balkans......Page 172
Withdrawing from the land: social and spiritual crisis in the indigenous Russian Arctic......Page 193
Remnants of revolution in China......Page 209
Stretching postsocialism......Page 228
Rethinking Chinese consumption: social palliatives and the rhetorics of transition in postsocialist China......Page 230
How far do analyses of postsocialism travel? The case of Central Asia......Page 251
'Eurasia', ideology and the political imagination in provincial Russia......Page 271
Democracy export and global civil society......Page 290
Seeding civil society......Page 292
Beyond transition: rethinking elite configurations in the Balkans......Page 310
Afterword: globalism and postsocialist prospects......Page 330
Index......Page 348