Masquerade and Postsocialism: Ritual and Cultural Dispossession in Bulgaria (New Anthropologies of Europe) - Softcover

Creed, Gerald W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253222613 ISBN 13: 9780253222619

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Gerald W. Creed analyzes contemporary mumming rituals in rural Bulgaria for what they reveal about life after socialism―and the current state of postsocialist studies. Mumming rituals have flourished in the post-Soviet era. Elaborately costumed dancers go from house to house demanding sustenance and bestowing blessings. Through the analysis of these rites, Creed critiques key themes in postsocialist studies, including understandings of civil society and democracy, gender and sexuality, autonomy and community, and ethnicity and nationalism. He argues that these events reveal indigenous cultural resources that could have been used both practically and intellectually to ease the postsocialist reconstruction of Bulgarian society, but were not.

About this title

About the Author

Gerald W. Creed is Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he is Executive Officer of the Anthropology Program. He is author of Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253222613
• ISBN 13: 9780253222619
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254