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The Socialist Good Life: Desire, Development, and Standards of Living in Eastern Europe
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The Socialist Good Life: Desire, Development, and Standards of Living in Eastern Europe
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780253047762 |
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Publisher: | Indiana University Press (Ips) |
Publication date: | 06/02/2020 |
Pages: | 256 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments1. The Pleasures of Backwardness / Zsuzsa Gille, Cristofer Scarboro, and Diana Mincytė2. Consuming Dialogues: Pleasure, Restraint, "Backwardness," and "Civilization" in Eastern Europe / Mary Neuburger3. Just Rewards: The Social Contract and Communism's Hard Bargain with the Citizen-Consumer / Patrick Hyder Patterson4. Conceptualizing Consumption in the Polish People's Republic / Brian Porter-Szűcs 5. Oranges and the New Black: Importing, Provisioning, and Consuming Tropical Fruits and Coffee in the GDR, 1971–1989 / Anne Dietrich6. VCRs, Modernity, and Consumer Culture in Late State Socialist Poland / Patryk Wasiak7. The Enchantment of Imaginary Europe: Consumer Practices in Post-Soviet Ukraine / Tania Bulakh8. The Late Socialist Good Life and its Discontents: Bit, Kultura, and the Social Life of Goods / Cristofer Scarboro9. The Prosumerist Resonance Machine: Rethinking Political Subjectivity and Consumer Desire in State Socialism / Zsuzsa Gille and Diana MincytėIndexWhat People are Saying About This
"The time is ripe for this volume of essays, given climate change, escalating socio-economic inequalities, and now the radical effects of the novel coronavirus. These studies offer a nuanced picture of the modern "good life" that emerged in state-socialist Eastern Europe, with new perspectives on its successes and failures. There are surprises here. Who would have predicted the convergence among economists in east and west on supply-side theory by the 1970s? There are also provocations. Practices we might consider desirable today arose, ironically, from what were understood at the time as the failures of state-socialist consumer regimes: reuse and recycling, D.I.Y. skills for adapting, repairing and caring for the mass-produced goods available. In the years ahead, we may have much to learn from this exploration of the state-socialist experience. "
This trailblazing book examines the achievements and real pleasures of the socialist good life. Mobilizing their deep knowledge of state socialist Eastern Europe, the authors upend our assumptions and offer us new coordinates for understanding consumption, politics, and the good life. They question how socialist consumption has been measured and ask whether it had any relation to a 'social contract,' whether it resulted in consumerist apathy, and whether it may have, in fact, escaped alienation and offered a missed post-materialist future.
The time is ripe for this volume of essays, given climate change, escalating socio-economic inequalities, and now the radical effects of the novel coronavirus. These studies offer a nuanced picture of the modern "good life" that emerged in state-socialist Eastern Europe, with new perspectives on its successes and failures. There are surprises here. Who would have predicted the convergence among economists in east and west on supply-side theory by the 1970s? There are also provocations. Practices we might consider desirable today arose, ironically, from what were understood at the time as the failures of state-socialist consumer regimes: reuse and recycling, D.I.Y. skills for adapting, repairing and caring for the mass-produced goods available. In the years ahead, we may have much to learn from this exploration of the state-socialist experience.
This trailblazing book examines the achievements and real pleasures of the socialist good life. Mobilizing their deep knowledge of state socialist Eastern Europe, the authors upend our assumptions and offer us new coordinates for understanding consumption, politics, and the good life. They question how socialist consumption has been measured and ask whether it had any relation to a 'social contract,' whether it resulted in consumerist apathy, and whether it may have, in fact, escaped alienation and offered a missed post-materialist future.
The Socialist Good Life is a first-class, rigorously researched, richly documented, and thought-provoking book, which will make a significant contribution to scholarship in its field.
The time is ripe for this volume of essays, given climate change, escalating socio-economic inequalities, and now the radical effects of the novel coronavirus. These studies offer a nuanced picture of the modern "good life" that emerged in state-socialist Eastern Europe, with new perspectives on its successes and failures. There are surprises here. Who would have predicted the convergence among economists in east and west on supply-side theory by the 1970s? There are also provocations. Practices we might consider desirable today arose, ironically, from what were understood at the time as the failures of state-socialist consumer regimes: reuse and recycling, D.I.Y. skills for adapting, repairing and caring for the mass-produced goods available. In the years ahead, we may have much to learn from this exploration of the state-socialist experience.
The Socialist Good Life is a first-class, rigorously researched, richly documented, and thought-provoking book, which will make a significant contribution to scholarship in its field.