Getting by in Postsocialist Romania

Getting by in Postsocialist Romania

Author: David A. Kideckel

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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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.


Ambiguous Transitions

Ambiguous Transitions

Author: Jill Massino

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1785335995

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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.


Disrupted Landscapes

Disrupted Landscapes

Author: Stefan Dorondel

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1785331213

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The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation’s forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.


Socialist Heritage

Socialist Heritage

Author: Emanuela Grama

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-12-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0253044839

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This prize-winning study of post-WWII Romania examines the fraught relationship between national heritage and Socialist statecraft. In Socialist Heritage, ethnographer and historian Emanuela Grama explores the socialist state’s attempt to create its own heritage, as well as the ongoing legacy of that project. While many argue that the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe aimed to erase the pre-war history of the socialist cities, Grama shows that the communist state in Romania sought to exploit the past for its own benefit. The book traces the transformation of Bucharest’s Old Town district from the early twentieth century into the twenty-first. Under socialism, politicians and professionals used the district’s historic buildings—especially the ruins of a medieval palace—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. Its poor residents decry their semi-decrepit homes, while entrepreneurs see 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. Winner of the 2020 Ed A. Hewitt Book Prize


Under the Sign of the Cross

Under the Sign of the Cross

Author: Giuseppe Tateo

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2020-08-01

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1789208599

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Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book delves into the thriving industry of religious infrastructure in Romania, where 4,000 Orthodox churches and cathedrals have been built in three decades. Following the construction of the world’s highest Orthodox cathedral in Bucharest, the book brings together sociological and anthropological scholarship on eastern Christianity, secularization, urban change and nationalism. Reading postsocialism through the prism of religious change, the author argues that the emergence of political, entrepreneurial and intellectual figures after 1990 has happened ‘under the sign of the cross’.


Domesticity on Display

Domesticity on Display

Author: Maria Cristache

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-10-23

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 3030787834

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This book examines postsocialist transformations reflected in urban middle-class domestic spaces and in museums dedicated to socialism in Romania. It focuses on the significance and circulation of porcelain and crystal sets and ornaments during late socialism and after 1989, following the experiences of consumers, workers in the glassware and porcelain industry, and artists. By tracing the values and temporalities embedded in materiality, the book sheds light on how objects shape daily life in a time of cultural, economic, and social change. Drawing on ethnographic research, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the ambiguous relation between the middle-class and the socialist state, using materiality and consumption to shed light on contradictions between aspirations and resources and between official discourses and everyday practices. The book reveals changes in practices of display, gift exchange, and barter, in the perception and use of time, as well as in gender and inter-generational relations. This work will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists and cultural historians, especially researchers interested in consumption, material culture, postsocialism, the anthropology of value and gift, the study of social time, practices of the middle-class, and the history of consumption in Eastern Europe.


Postsocialism

Postsocialism

Author: C. M. Hann

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9780415262583

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This volume presents the anthropological responses to these problems. The authors demonstrate that even when local conditions are specific, the view "from below" illuminates macro trends.


Post-Communist Romania

Post-Communist Romania

Author: D. Light

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2001-02-02

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0333977912

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Drawing on contributions from various disciplines, this up to date collection analyses Romania's experiences of the transition from the harsh realities of the Ceausescu dictatorship to the uncertainties of the efforts to consolidate democracy and introduce a market economy. With its focus on Romania's progress in coming to terms with the legacy of its communist past, the realities of pluralism, the introduction of a market economy and the challenge of European integration, the volume will be key reading for academics, students and practitioners interested in transition and Romania.


The Vanishing Hectare

The Vanishing Hectare

Author: Katherine Verdery

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780801488696

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In most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fall of communism meant individuals could acquire land. Based on fieldwork between 1990 and 2001, the author explores the importance of land and land ownership in one Transylvanian community.


Postsocialism

Postsocialism

Author: Maruška Svašek

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2006-03-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0857455591

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In many parts of post-socialist Europe the tumultuous political and economic developments have generated strong emotions, ranging from hope and euphoria to disappointment, envy, disillusionment, sorrow, loneliness, and hatred. Yet these aspects have been largely neglected in analyses of the profound transformations that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. Based on a wide variety of ethnographic case studies focusing on Russian, Siberian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, and Polish communities, this volume proves the significance of emotions to post-socialist political processes as an inherent part of the transformations and sheds new light on the impact of local, national, and transnational political forces that have given rise to the resurgence of nationalist sentiments, increasing poverty and marginalization, conflicts arising from the restitution of state property, constitutional changes, and economic deprivation.