Synopsis
The dramatic overturn of state socialist administrations shocked most political commentators. Received wisdom in the West was that the nations in Eastern Europe and Russia were repressed to the point of paralysis and that they were politically inert. But the events following the 1989 revolutions revealed their political sophistication through the rebuilding of civil society. This book captures the internal dynamics of that process and situates Eastern European societies within new perspectives in social theory.
In the introductory section, the distinguished anthropologists Claude Meillassoux and Aidan Southall identify the importance of the 1989 revolutions for Marxist approaches. Then, starting from detailed ethnographic descriptions of social movements in progression, each contributor identifies the significance of their observation in terms of theory. Chapters from anthropologists in the field provide comprehensive analyses of newly evolving property relations, nationalistic movements, and new social identities. The countries covered in this theoretically informed study range from the core of the East European revolution (Germany and Hungary) to the hegemonic center (Russia) and the intriguing cases of Romania and Siberia. Never before has such a wide variety of current topics been applied to such a suggestive list of nations."synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Synopsis
This work offers a theoretically informed analysis of the internal dynamics underlying the recent dramatic upheavals in Russia and Eastern Europe. The contributors integrate detailed anthropological observation of a wide range of Eastern European societies in transition with a variety of fresh interpretations of social theory drawn from Marxist, feminist and postmodern traditions. Their work should be of interest to students and specialists in Eastern Euuropean politics, social movements and classical social theory, as well as to anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists.
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