Transnational Imaginations of Socialism
Transnational Imaginations of Socialism

Author: Teresa Malice

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 3110667428

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Town twinning refers to the postwar phenomenon of administrative exchange between analogous municipalities. Cold War-related research has mostly interpreted it as an instrument to pursue European integration, or to solidify détente "from below". However, municipalities were not only administrative, neutral actors, but also bearers of political content. This is particularly visible in the case of Italian towns located in the Western bloc, guided by socialist-oriented administrations, and their "twin" counterparts in the German Democratic Republic. This volume explores the connections initiated by such towns in the 1960s-1970s, focusing on socialist-specific conceptions which fueled the policies implemented by "red" municipalities, in managing local economies and social policies, but also in maintaining a lively and interconnected transnational microsociability among grassroots activists. Despite the increasing ideological divergences between Eastern and Western communists, and between Italian democratic communists and the more dogmatic and repressive, strictly pro-Soviet ones in the GDR, communication continued to flourish on the local level. The book explores what still linked the two worlds together, the "bright side of socialism": in this case, a common symbolism related to the past, practical exchanges in the present dimension, and a shared future imagination and conception of the town on the basis of a socialist horizon, built around welfare and services for citizens and workers.

Transnational Imaginations of Socialism
Transnational Imaginations of Socialism

Author: Teresa Malice

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 311067095X

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Town twinning refers to the postwar phenomenon of administrative exchange between analogous municipalities. Cold War-related research has mostly interpreted it as an instrument to pursue European integration, or to solidify détente "from below". However, municipalities were not only administrative, neutral actors, but also bearers of political content. This is particularly visible in the case of Italian towns located in the Western bloc, guided by socialist-oriented administrations, and their "twin" counterparts in the German Democratic Republic. This volume explores the connections initiated by such towns in the 1960s-1970s, focusing on socialist-specific conceptions which fueled the policies implemented by "red" municipalities, in managing local economies and social policies, but also in maintaining a lively and interconnected transnational microsociability among grassroots activists. Despite the increasing ideological divergences between Eastern and Western communists, and between Italian democratic communists and the more dogmatic and repressive, strictly pro-Soviet ones in the GDR, communication continued to flourish on the local level. The book explores what still linked the two worlds together, the "bright side of socialism": in this case, a common symbolism related to the past, practical exchanges in the present dimension, and a shared future imagination and conception of the town on the basis of a socialist horizon, built around welfare and services for citizens and workers.

Transnational Imaginations of Socialism
Transnational Imaginations of Socialism

Author: Teresa Malice

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783110667264

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During the Cold War, towns became a field of contention. At stake were the ways they should be thought and organized, according to the respective political-ideological paradigms. This book explores the transnational, socialist-specific imagination o

Socialist Imaginations
Socialist Imaginations

Author: Stefan Arvidsson

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138299948

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This interdisciplinary volume offers a crucial new perspective on the appeal and profound cultural meaning of socialism in the modern world. At a time when socialism appears to be in inexorable decline, it is time to rethink the factors that account for its meteoric--and, in the past two centuries, unparalleled--rise. Socialism did not attract millions of people primarily because of logical argument and empirical evidence, important though those were. Rather, it told the most compelling story about the past, present, and future.

Bastards of Utopia
Bastards of Utopia

Author: Maple Razsa

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-04-06

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 025301588X

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Bastards of Utopia, the companion to a feature documentary film of the same name, explores the experiences and political imagination of young radical activists in the former Yugoslavia, participants in what they call alterglobalization or "globalization from below." Ethnographer Maple Razsa follows individual activists from the transnational protests against globalization of the early 2000s through the Occupy encampments. His portrayal of activism is both empathetic and unflinching—an engaged, elegant meditation on the struggle to re-imagine leftist politics and the power of a country's youth. More information on the film can be found at www.der.org/films/bastards-of-utopia.html.

Socialist Imaginations
Socialist Imaginations

Author: Stefan Arvidsson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-09-21

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 1351536044

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This volume offers new perspectives on the appeal and profound cultural meaning of socialism over the past two centuries. It brings together scholarship from various disciplines addressing diverse national contexts, including Britain, China, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Taken together, the contributions highlight the aesthetic, narrative, and religious dimensions of socialism as it has developed through three broad phases in the modern era: early nineteenth-century beginnings, mass-based political organizations, and the attainment of state power in the twentieth century and beyond. Socialism did not attract millions of people primarily because of logical argument and empirical evidence, important though those were. Rather, it told the most compelling story about the past, present, and future. Refocusing attention on socialism's imaginative dimensions, this volume aims to revive scholarly interest in one of the modern world1s most important political orientations.

The Third Way
The Third Way

Author: Anthony Giddens

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-29

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0745666604

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The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.

The Struggle for the Long-Term in Transnational Science and Politics
The Struggle for the Long-Term in Transnational Science and Politics

Author: Jenny Andersson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-04-10

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1317511441

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This book reconsiders the power of the idea of the future. Bringing together perspectives from cultural history, environmental history, political history and the history of science, it investigates how the future became a specific field of action in liberal democratic, state socialist and post-colonial regimes after the Second World War. It highlights the emergence of new forms of predictive scientific expertise in this period, and shows how such forms of expertise interacted with political systems of the Cold War world order, as the future became the prism for dealing with post-industrialisation, technoscientific progress, changing social values, Cold War tensions and an emerging Third World. A forgotten problem of cultural history, the future re-emerges in this volume as a fundamentally contested field in which forms of control and central forms of resistance met, as different actors set out to colonise and control and others to liberate. The individual studies of this book show how the West European, African, Romanian and Czechoslovak "long term" was constructed through forms of expertise, computer simulations and models, and they reveal how such constructions both opened up new realities but also imposed limits on possible futures.

China's Soviet Dream
China's Soviet Dream

Author: Yan Li

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-17

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780367209148

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This book examines the introduction of Soviet socialist culture in the People's Republic of China, with a focus on the period of Sino-Soviet friendship in the 1950s. The vast state initiative to transplant Soviet culture into Chinese soil has conventionally been dismissed as a tool of propaganda and political indoctrination. However, this book demonstrates that this transnational engagement not only facilitated China's broader transition to socialist modernity but also generated unintended consequences that outlasted the propaganda. Drawing on archival findings, newspapers, magazines, media productions, and oral interview, the book delves into changes in Chinese popular imagination and everyday aesthetics contingent upon Soviet influence. It proposes a revisionist view of the Soviet impact on China, revealing that Soviet culture offered Chinese people the language and imagery to conceive of their future as a dream about material abundance, self-determination, and the pleasures of leisure and cultural enrichment. Written with a transnational, interdisciplinary, and thematic approach, this book is aimed at scholars and students in the fields of Sino-Soviet relations, international socialism, modern Chinese history, cultural studies, and mass communication. It will also be of interest to researchers seeking to understand the nature, significance, and repercussions of Sino-Soviet cultural engagement.

Breaking Down Bipolarity
Breaking Down Bipolarity

Author: Martin Previšić

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-10-04

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 3110658976

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This book is aimed at presenting fresh views, interpretations, and reinterpretations of some already researched issues relating to the Yugoslav foreign policy and international relations up to year 1991. Yugoslavia positioned itself as a communist state that was not under the heel of the Soviet diplomacy and policy and as such was perceived by the West as an acceptable partner and useful tool in counteracting the Soviet influence.