Synopsis
The dramatic overturn of state socialist administrations shocked most political commentators. Received wisdom in the West was that the nations in Eastern Europe and Russia were repressed to the point of paralysis and that they were politically inert. But the events following the 1989 revolutions revealed their political sophistication through the rebuilding of civil society. This book captures the internal dynamics of that process and situates Eastern European Societies within new perspectives in social theory.
In the introductory section, the distinguished anthropologists Claude Meillassoux and Aidan Southall identify the importance of the 1989 revolutions for Marxist approaches. Then, starting from detailed ethnographic descriptions of social movements in progression, each contributor identifies the significance of their observation in terms of theory. Chapters from anthropologists relations, nationalistic movements, and new social identities.
The countries covered in this theoretically informed study range from the core of the East European revolution (Germany and Hungary) to the hegemonic center (Russia) and the intriguing cases of Romania and Siberia. Never before has such a wide variety of current topics been applied to such suggestive list of nations.
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About the Author
Hermine G. De Soto is assistant scientist in anthropology at the Women's Studies Research Center at the University at Wisconsin-Madison. She is the editor of CULTURE AND CONTRADICTION: DIALECTICS OF WEALTH, POWER AND SYMBOL (Mellon Research University Press, 1992). Her previous research is forthcoming in THE DELAYED TRANSFORMATION: EXPERIENCES OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN A VILLAGE IN THE BLACK FOREST. Presently her field research is on "contesting female personhood: comparison of east and west German legal cultures in the process of unification."
David G. Anderson is a doctoral candidate and Commonwealth scholar in the Department of Social Anthropology at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, England. He has worked for several years in a Gwich'in community in Canada's Northwest Territories. His ongoing research and fieldwork are on social change among northern native peoples in Siberia.
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