Paperback : $82.38
Communism Unwrapped is a collection of essays that unwraps the complex world of consumption under communism in postwar Eastern Europe, featuring new work by both American and European scholars writing from variety of disciplinary perspectives. The result is a fresh look at everyday life under communism that explores the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, exchanged and assessed goods. These phenomena, the editors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived and experienced in its widely varied contexts in the region. Consumption pervaded everyday life far more than most other political and social phenomena. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume builds on a new field of study. It brings dimension and nuance to our understanding of the communist period and a new perspective to our current analyses of consumerism.
Communism Unwrapped is a collection of essays that unwraps the complex world of consumption under communism in postwar Eastern Europe, featuring new work by both American and European scholars writing from variety of disciplinary perspectives. The result is a fresh look at everyday life under communism that explores the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, exchanged and assessed goods. These phenomena, the editors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived and experienced in its widely varied contexts in the region. Consumption pervaded everyday life far more than most other political and social phenomena. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume builds on a new field of study. It brings dimension and nuance to our understanding of the communist period and a new perspective to our current analyses of consumerism.
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Introduction, Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger
I. Living Large: Introduction
1. Tuzex and the Hustler: Living It Up in Czechoslovakia, Paulina
Bren
2. Utopia Gone Terribly Right: Plutonium's "Gated Communities" in
the Soviet Union and the United States, Kate Brown
3. "Knife in the Water": Competitive Consumption in Urbanizing
Poland, Kacper Poblocki
II. Quality Control: Introduction
4. The Taste of Smoke: Bulgartabak and the Manufacturing of
Cigarettes and Satisfaction, Mary Neuburger
5. Risky Business: What Was Really Being Sold in the Department
Stores of Socialist Eastern Europe?, Patrick Hyder Patterson
6. Material Harmony: The Quest for Quality in Socialist Bulgaria,
1960s-1980s, Rossitza Guentcheva
III. Kitchen Talk: Introduction
7. Eating Up Yugoslavia: Cookbooks and Consumption in Socialist
Yugoslavia, Wendy Bracewell
8. Grounds for Discontent? Coffee from the Black Market to the
Kaffeeklatsch in the GDR, Katherine Pence
9. From Black Caviar to Blackouts: Gender, Consumption, and
Lifestyle in Ceausescu's Romania, Jill Massino
IV. To Market, To Market... : Introduction
10. The "Socialist Bourse": Alcohol, Reputation, and Gender in
Romania's Second Economy during the 1980s, Narcis Tulbure
11. The Extraordinary Career of Feketevágo Ur: Wood Theft,
Pig-killing, and Entrepreneurship in Communist Hungary, 1948-1956,
Karl Brown
12. Keeping It Close to Home: Resourcefulness and Scarcity in Late
Socialist and Post-Socialist Poland, Malgorzata Mazurek
V. Constructive Criticism : Introduction
13 Kids, Cars, or Cashews?: Debating and Remembering Consumption in
Socialist Hungary, Tamas Dombos and Lena Pellandini-Simanyi
14 The House that Socialism Built: Reform, Consumption and
Inequality in Postwar Yugoslavia, Brigitte Le Normand
15 Shop Around the Bloc: Trader Tourism and its Discontents on the
East German-Polish Border, Mark Keck-Szajbel
Index
Paulina Bren teaches at Vassar College and is the author of The
Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968
Prague Spring.
Mary Neuburger is Associate Professor of History at the University
of Texas at Austin and is the author of The Orient Within: Muslim
Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria and
Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria.
"[Bren and Neuburger] provide a valuable and detailed backdrop to a
history of places where sausage stands for abundance and bulldozed
parmesan symbolises crushed hopes for freedom."--Contemporary
European History
"The essays are consistently readable and insightful, and the
editors' introductions to each section help guide readers along the
contours of the book's major themes. Highly
recommended."--CHOICE
"This rich collection of essays offers a unique look at post-1945
Eastern Europe. Departing from the Cold War narrative of endemic
shortages and the gloominess of daily life under communism, the
essays highlight the everyday creativity and agency of ordinary
people. We follow Eastern Europeans to hard-currency stores and
gated communities. We see them cross borders to shop in
better-supplied neighboring countries and navigate complex social
networks to obtain
goods and favors. Situating these stories in the context of
transnational modernity rather than a totalizing party state, the
book offers a rare combination of new research and a compelling
theoretical
insight."--Malgorzata Fidelis, University of Illinois at
Chicago
"Consumerism in Eastern Europe has become a fertile field for
exploring the dreams and delusions of state socialist politics, as
well as the agency and resourcefulness of its citizens. Bren and
Neuburger's pioneering volume brings together a range of rich and
surprising case studies from across the whole region, significantly
enriching our understanding of Eastern European social history
during the Cold War."--Paul Betts, University of Sussex
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
