Cultural Transformations After Communism

Focusing on the profound transformation in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain, this record analyzes complex cultural dimensions, such as lifestyles, habits, value markers, and identity. Written by a group of experts, it presents case studies from the former communist countries that are members of the European Union today and attempts to answer crucial questions about the constructions of a new identity in the region: Have the processes of democratization and opening the borders produced mentality changes and new value systems? Is there a convergence of values and cultures between the new and old EU-members? Have there been backlashes in the processes of reconstructing national identities? This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in European integration, issues of national identity, and the politics and culture of the post-Communist countries.

Focusing on the profound transformation in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain, this record analyzes complex cultural dimensions, such as lifestyles, habits, value markers, and identity. Written by a group of experts, it presents case studies from the former communist countries that are members of the European Union today and attempts to answer crucial questions about the constructions of a new identity in the region: Have the processes of democratization and opening the borders produced mentality changes and new value systems? Is there a convergence of values and cultures between the new and old EU-members? Have there been backlashes in the processes of reconstructing national identities? This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in European integration, issues of national identity, and the politics and culture of the post-Communist countries.

Cities after the Fall of Communism traces the cultural reorientation of East European cities since 1989. Analyzing the architecture, commemorative practices, and urban planning of cities such as Lviv, Vilnius, and Odessa, the contributors to this volume demonstrate how history may be selectively re-imagined in light of present political and cultural realities. These essays show that while East European cities gravitate nostalgically toward Habsburg, Baltic, Imperial Russian, and Germanic pasts, they are also embracing new urban identities grounded in ethnic-national, European, Western, and global contexts. Ultimately, the editors argue that one can see a "New Europe" taking shape in these cities, where a strained discourse between different versions of the past and variously envisioned futures is being set in stone, steel, and glass.

Harnessing a cultural sociological approach to explore transformations in key social spheres in post-1989 Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer illuminates shifts in religiosity, sympathy towards others, and civic activity in post-Communist Poland in the light of Western influence over elements of Polish life. Reshaping Poland’s Community after Communism focuses on three major cases, largely ignored in Polish scholarship: (1) a hugely popular, faux-baroque Catholic shrine, which illustrates new strategies adopted by the Polish Catholic Church to attract believers; (2) Woodstock Station, a widely known free charity music festival, demonstrating new practices of sympathy towards strangers; and (3) the emergence of national internet pro-voting campaigns and small-town watchdog websites, which uncover changes in practical uses of civic engagement. In exploring grass-roots, everyday negotiations of religiosity, charity, and civic engagement in contemporary Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer demonstrates how a country’s cultural changes can suggest wider, dramatic democratic transformation.

Harnessing a cultural sociological approach to explore transformations in key social spheres in post-1989 Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer illuminates shifts in religiosity, sympathy towards others, and civic activity in post-Communist Poland in the light of Western influence over elements of Polish life. Reshaping Poland’s Community after Communism focuses on three major cases, largely ignored in Polish scholarship: (1) a hugely popular, faux-baroque Catholic shrine, which illustrates new strategies adopted by the Polish Catholic Church to attract believers; (2) Woodstock Station, a widely known free charity music festival, demonstrating new practices of sympathy towards strangers; and (3) the emergence of national internet pro-voting campaigns and small-town watchdog websites, which uncover changes in practical uses of civic engagement. In exploring grass-roots, everyday negotiations of religiosity, charity, and civic engagement in contemporary Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer demonstrates how a country’s cultural changes can suggest wider, dramatic democratic transformation.

"Remembering the past, especially as collectivity, is a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration is an integral part of the establishment of new political regimes, new identities, and new principles of political legitimacy. This volume is about the explosion of the politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, particularly about the politics of its commemoration twenty years later. It offers seventeen in-depth case studies, an original theoretical framework, and a comparative study of memory regime types and their origins. Four different kinds of mnemonic actors are identified: mnemonic warriors, mnemonic pluralists, mnemonic abnegators, and mnemonic prospectives. Their combinations render three different types of memory regimes: fractured, pillarized, and unified. Disciplined comparative analysis shows how several different configurations of factors affect the emergence of mnemonic actors and different varieties of memory regimes. There are three groups of causal factors that influence the political form of the memory regime: the range of structural constraints the actors face (e.g., the type of regime transformation), cultural constraints linked to past political conflict (e.g., salient ethnic or religious cleavages), and cultural and strategic choices actors make (e.g. framing post-communist political identities)"--

"Transition" is the name typically given to the time of radical change following the fall of communism, connoting a shift from planned to market economy, from dictatorship to democracy. Transition is also, in Michael Kennedy's analysis, a culture in its own right -- with its own contentions, repressions, and unrealized potentials. By elaborating transition as a culture of power and viewing it in its complex relation to emancipation, nationalism, and war, Kennedy's book clarifies the transformations of postcommunism as well as, more generally, the ways in which culture articulates social change. Kennedy examines transition culture's historical foundation by looking at the relationship among perestroika, Poland, and Hungary, and considers its structure and practice in the following decade. His wide-ranging analysis -- of the artifacts of transition culture's proponents, of interviews with providers and recipients of technical assistance in business across Eastern Europe, and of focus groups assessing the successes and failures of social change in Estonia and Ukraine -- suggests a transition culture deeply implicated in nationalism. Book jacket.

In Soviet times, anthropologists in the Soviet Union were closely involved in the state's work of nation building. They helped define official nationalities, and gathered material about traditional customs and suitably heroic folklore, whilst at the same time refraining from work on the reality of contemporary Soviet life. Since the end of the Soviet Union anthropology in Russia has been transformed. International research standards have been adopted, and the focus of research has shifted to include urban culture and difficult subjects, such as xenophobia. However, this transformation has been, and continues to be, controversial, with, for example, strongly contested debates about the relevance of Western anthropology and cultural theory to post-Soviet reality. This book presents an overview of how anthropology in Russia has changed since Soviet times, and showcases examples of important Russian anthropological work. As such, the book will be of great interest not just to Russian specialists, but also to anthropologists more widely, and to all those interested in the way academic study is related to prevailing political and social conditions.