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This book focuses on food culture and politics in three Baltic
States: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In popular and scholarly
writings, the Baltic states are often seen as a meat-and-potatoes
kind of place, inferior to sophisticated cuisines of the West and
exotic diets in the East. Such views stem from the long
intellectual tradition that focuses on political and cultural
centers as sources of progress. But, as a new generation of writers
has argued, in order to fully grasp the ongoing cultural and
political changes, we need to shift the focus from capital cities
such as Paris, Berlin, Rome, or Moscow to everyday life in
borderland regions that are primary arenas where such
transformations unfold. Building on this perspective, chapters
featured in this book examine how identities were negotiated
through the implementation of new food laws, how tastes were
reinvented during imperial encounters, and how ethnic and class
boundaries were both maintained and transgressed in Baltic kitchens
over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
In so doing, the book not only explores culinary practices across
the region, but also offers a new vantage point for understanding
everyday life and the entanglement between nature and culture in
modern Europe. This book was originally published as a special
issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies.
This book focuses on food culture and politics in three Baltic
States: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In popular and scholarly
writings, the Baltic states are often seen as a meat-and-potatoes
kind of place, inferior to sophisticated cuisines of the West and
exotic diets in the East. Such views stem from the long
intellectual tradition that focuses on political and cultural
centers as sources of progress. But, as a new generation of writers
has argued, in order to fully grasp the ongoing cultural and
political changes, we need to shift the focus from capital cities
such as Paris, Berlin, Rome, or Moscow to everyday life in
borderland regions that are primary arenas where such
transformations unfold. Building on this perspective, chapters
featured in this book examine how identities were negotiated
through the implementation of new food laws, how tastes were
reinvented during imperial encounters, and how ethnic and class
boundaries were both maintained and transgressed in Baltic kitchens
over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
In so doing, the book not only explores culinary practices across
the region, but also offers a new vantage point for understanding
everyday life and the entanglement between nature and culture in
modern Europe. This book was originally published as a special
issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies.
What does the good life mean in a "backward" place? As communist
regimes denigrated widespread unemployment and consumer excess in
Western countries, 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.
What does the good life mean in a "backward" place? As communist
regimes denigrated widespread unemployment and consumer excess in
Western countries, 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.
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