Among the first anthropologists to work in Eastern Europe,
Katherine Verdery had built up a significant base of ethnographic
and historical expertise when the major political transformations
in the region began to take place. In this collection of essays
dealing with the aftermath of Soviet-style socialism and the
different forms that may replace it, she explores the nature of
socialism in order to understand more fully its consequences. By
analyzing her primary data from Romania and Transylvania and
synthesizing information from other sources, Verdery lends a
distinctive anthropological perspective to a variety of themes
common to political and economic studies on the end of socialism:
themes such as "civil society," the creation of market economies,
privatization, national and ethnic conflict, and changing gender
relations.
Under Verdery's examination, privatization and civil society
appear not only as social processes, for example, but as symbols in
political rhetoric. The classic pyramid scheme is not just a means
of enrichment but a site for reconceptualizing the meaning of money
and an unusual form of post-Marxist millenarianism. Land being
redistributed as private property stretches and shrinks, as in the
imaginings of the farmers struggling to tame it. Infused by this
kind of ethnographic sensibility, the essays reject the assumption
of a transition to capitalism in favor of investigating local
processes in their own terms.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!