New Studies in the Politics
New Studies in the Politics

Author: Michael E. Brown

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0853458529

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This pathbreaking collection of essays recasts the prevailing conceptions of the historical roots and role of the U.S. Communist Party and its social setting. The contributors focus on the movement that formed around the party and the popular culture it expressed, particularly in the period from 1930 to 1960. They look at the impact of the party and its followers in the areas of education, literature, and the arts, in the African-American community, and on the women's and labor movements. In their preface, the editors place the book in the context of the broader critical examination of the history of the left in the United States. By analyzing the historical reasons for the party's appeal and its relationship to those outside its ranks, the volume contributes to a fuller understanding of the broader societal context within which all oppositional movements are formed. Contributors (in order of appearance in book): Michael E. Brown, Mark Naison, John Gerassi, Stephen Leberstein, Ellen Schrecker, Rosalyn Baxandall, Roger Keeran, Gerald Horne, Annette T. Rubinstein, Marvin E. Gettleman, Alan Wald, and Gil Green (interviewed by Anders Stephanson).

The Concept of Political Culture
The Concept of Political Culture

Author: Stephen Welch

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-27

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1349227935

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'...erudite, thought-provoking and well-written.'Archie Brown, Professor of Politics, Oxford University. The return to prominence of the concept of political culture offers an opportunity to re-evaluate its contribution to the social sciences. This study casts a broader than usual net, embracing not only political science (with equal emphasis placed on the concept's use in communist studies), but also sociology and history. On this basis a distinctive theory of political culture, and not merely another typology, is developed. Political culture, instead of being a token in the sterile debate between interest- and culture-based explanation, offers the means of transcending that debate.

Compliance Ideologies
Compliance Ideologies

Author: Richard W. Wilson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-05-29

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780521415811

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Originally published in 1992, this book is about political culture. It examines developments in the social sciences and integrates them into a theoretical explanation of historical changes in political values. The starting point is the premise that political culture is rooted in the interaction between individual thinking and social norms.

The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures
The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures

Author: Aga Skrodzka

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 799

ISBN-13: 019088553X

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Looking at monuments, murals, computer games, recycling campaigns, children's books, and other visual artifacts, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures reassesses communism's historical and cultural legacy.

Local Politics in Communist Countries
Local Politics in Communist Countries

Author:

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published:

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780813130255

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There are many reasons why it is important to study local politics -- political culture, government, political process -- in Communist party states. As in all politics, local politics in Communist party states are the political articulation of the local community. This is the political arena where policies concerning local issues are formulated by the officials. This is where the officials are approached by citizens with their particular demands. This is where citizens articulate their preferences, aspirations, and values through political participation. And this is where officials, both elected and appointed, are recruited. In this volume, Daniel N. Nelson has assembled a team of international scholars to consider local politics in Communist party states including the U.S.S.R., China, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Together, they explore how local social and political forces are articulated in the national and party organizations; they also reveal how the study of comparative local politics provides vitality for the study of national politics. Rather than treating local communities as receivers and translators of national inputs, the contributors demonstrate that the local dimension and national politics mutually influence one another and illuminate the social reality in communist societies.

Communism's Public Sphere
Communism's Public Sphere

Author: Kyrill Kunakhovich

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-01-15

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1501767062

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Communism's Public Sphere explores the political role of cultural spaces in the Eastern Bloc. Under communist regimes that banned free speech, political discussions shifted to spaces of art: theaters, galleries, concert halls, and youth clubs. Kyrill Kunakhovich shows how these venues turned into sites of dialogue and contestation. While officials used them to spread the communist message, artists and audiences often flouted state policy and championed alternative visions. Cultural spaces therefore came to function as a public sphere, or a rare outlet for discussing public affairs. Focusing on Kraków in Poland and Leipzig in East Germany, Communism's Public Sphere sheds new light on state-society interactions in the Eastern Bloc. In place of the familiar trope of domination and resistance, it highlights unexpected symbioses like state-sponsored rock and roll, socialist consumerism, and sanctioned dissent. By examining nearly five decades of communist rule, from the Red Army's arrival in Poland in 1944 to German reunification in 1990, Kunakhovich argues that cultural spaces played a pivotal mediating role. They helped reform and stabilize East European communism but also gave cover to the protest movements that ultimately brought it down.

Communism's Shadow
Communism's Shadow

Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-05-09

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1400887828

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It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.

The Theory of Political Culture
The Theory of Political Culture

Author: Stephen Welch

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-06-13

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0191663646

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Although the idea that politics is influenced by its cultural setting is so plausible as to be almost irresistible, political culture has remained a contested and controversial concept. Just what the cultural setting consists of and how its influence on politics is transmitted remain unclear and disputed. This book argues that the problem is insufficient attention to basic theoretical questions. Positivist political culture research based on attitude surveys, and the interpretivist alternative which explores meaningful context, despite their mutual antipathy share a neglect of these questions, while materialist and discursivist critiques of, and alternatives to, political culture research end up posing the very same questions. Resisting the specialization and sectarianism of much of political and social science, the book tackles head on the questions of what political culture is and how it works. It begins by arguing that we must explore the nature and dynamics of political culture. To do this it is necessary to reach beyond political science and reopen the interdisciplinary exchange in which political culture research was founded. The book reaches into the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Polanyi for foundational arguments about the nature of culture, and into social, cognitive, and cultural psychology for findings about human motivation which are radical in their implications for political culture research and its methods. It develops a dualistic theory of political culture, and uses the two dimensions of practice and discourse in a new analysis of the otherwise mysterious causal dynamics of political culture. It provides an explanation of what has hitherto only been asserted: the role played by political culture in both political stability and political change. Thus it restores a rigorously argued concept of political culture to a central place in political science, and suggests an agenda for its future development.