The Late Socialist Good Life in Bulgaria PDF Download

Author: Cristofer Scarboro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780739145593
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
This book investigates the question of subjectivity-how people made sense of a world that was supposed to be understood within centrally created ideological frameworks. It brings together the literature of socialism, nationalism and trans-nationalism, and post-colonialism, areas that have been heretofore all too discreet. How states attempt to model subjects, and the negotiation this entails, is the central question of the modern era. It will be of interest to scholars and students in a wide range of subjects from history to anthropology to aesthetics.

Author: Cristofer Scarboro
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253047803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

View

Book Description
“First-class, rigorously researched, richly documented, and thought-provoking” essays on the consumer experience in socialist Eastern Europe (Graham H. Roberts, author of Material Culture in Russia and the USSR). As communist regimes denigrated Western countries for widespread unemployment and consumer excess, socialist Eastern European states simultaneously legitimized their power through their apparent ability to satisfy consumers’ needs. Moving beyond binaries of production and consumption, the essays collected here examine the lessons consumption studies can offer about ethnic and national identity and the role of economic expertise in shaping consumer behavior. From Polish VCRs to Ukrainian fashion boutiques, tropical fruits in the GDR to cinemas in Belgrade, The Socialist Good Life explores what consumption means in a worker state where communist ideology emphasizes collective needs over individual pleasures.

Author: Mary C. Neuburger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501762508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
Ingredients of Change explores modern Bulgaria's foodways from the Ottoman era to the present, outlining how Bulgarians domesticated and adapted diverse local, regional, and global foods and techniques, and how the nation's culinary topography has been continually reshaped by the imperial legacies of the Ottomans, Habsburgs, Russians, and Soviets, as well as by the ingenuity of its own people. Changes in Bulgarian cooking and cuisine, Mary C. Neuburger shows, were driven less by nationalism than by the circulation of powerful food narratives—scientific, religious, and ethical—along with peoples, goods, technologies, and politics. Ingredients of Change tells this complex story through thematic chapters focused on bread, meat, milk and yogurt, wine, and the foundational vegetables of Bulgarian cuisine—tomatoes and peppers. Neuburger traces the ways in which these ingredients were introduced and transformed in the Bulgarian diet over time, often in the context of Bulgaria's tumultuous political history. She shows how the country's modern dietary and culinary transformations accelerated under a communist dictatorship that had the resources and will to fundamentally reshape what and how people ate and drank.

Author: Albena Shkodrova
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633864046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

View

Book Description
Communist Gourmet presents a lively, detailed account of how the communist regime in Bulgaria determined people’s everyday food experience between 1944 and 1989. It examines the daily routines of acquiring food, cooking it, and eating out at restaurants through the memories of Bulgarians and foreigners, during communism. In looking back on a wide array of issues and events, Albena Shkodrova attempts to explain the paradoxes of daily existence. She reports human stories that are touching, sometimes dark, but often full of humor and anecdotes from nearly one hundred people: some of them are Bulgarians who were involved in the communist food industry, whether as consumers or employees, while others are visitors from the United States and Western Europe who report culinary highlights and disappointments. The author made use of the national press, officially published cookbooks, Communist Party documents, and other previously unstudied sources. An appendix containing recipes of dishes typical of the period and an extensive set of archival photographs are special features of the volume.

Author: Kristen R. Ghodsee
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568588895
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

View

Book Description
A “brilliant,” “engaging,” and “valuable,” (Financial Times) exploration of why capitalism hurts women and how socialism, when done right, can bring economic independence, better labor conditions and, yes, even better sex. In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives. She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism. Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.

Author: Melissa Chakars
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

View

Book Description
The Buryats are a Mongolian population in Siberian Russia, the largest indigenous minority. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia presents the dramatic transformation in their everyday lives during the late twentieth century. The book challenges the common notion that the process of modernization during the later Soviet period created a Buryat national assertiveness rather than assimilation or support for the state.

Author: Kapka Kassabova
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 1742539009
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305

View

Book Description
After years on the outside, Bulgaria has finally made it into the EU club, but beyond the clichés about undrinkable plonk, cheap property, and assassins with poison-tipped umbrellas, the country remains a largely unknown quantity. Born on the muddy outskirts of Sofia, Kapka Kassabova grew up under Communism, got away just as soon as she could, and has loved and hated her homeland in equal measure ever since. In this illuminating and entertaining memoir, Kapka revisits Bulgaria and her own muddled relationship to it, travelling back to the scenes of her childhood, sampling its bizarre tourist sites, uncovering its centuries' old history of bloodshed and blurred borders, and capturing the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of her own and her country's past. Also available as an eBook

Author: Maria N. Todorova
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 640

View

Book Description
Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past. The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, and the perception of “the system”.

Author: Kristen Ghodsee
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822351021
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

View

Book Description
Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past.

Author: Miglena S. Todorova
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487528434
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

View

Book Description
Unequal under Socialism examines the formation of racial, gender, and national identities and relations in the socialist state. With a specific focus on Bulgaria, a former socialist country in the Balkans, Miglena S. Todorova traces the intertwined local and global forces driving racialization, socialist state policies, and Eurocentric Marxist and Leninist ideologies, all of which led to valued and devalued categories of women. Roma women, Muslim women, ethnic Bulgarian women, sex workers, and female factory and office workers were among those marked by socialist authorities for prosperity, accommodation, violent reformation, or erasure. Covering the period from the 1930s to the present and drawing upon original archival sources as well as a constellation of critical theories, Unequal under Socialism focuses on the lives of different women to articulate deep doubt about the capacity of socialism to sustain societies where all women prosper. Such doubt, the book suggests, is an under-recognized but important force shaping how women in former socialist countries have related to one another and to other women in the global North and South.