Synthetic Socialism: Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic - Hardcover

Rubin, Eli

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807832383 ISBN 13: 9780807832387

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009

Synopsis

Eli Rubin takes an innovative approach to consumer culture to explore questions of political consensus and consent and the impact of ideology on everyday life in the former East Germany. Synthetic Socialism explores the history of East Germany through the production and use of a deceptively simple material: plastic. Rubin investigates the connections between the communist government, its Bauhaus-influenced designers, its retooled postwar chemical industry, and its general consumer population. He argues that East Germany was neither a totalitarian state nor a niche society but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens.To East Germans, Rubin says, plastic was a high-technology material, a symbol of socialism's scientific and economic superiority over capitalism. Most of all, the state and its designers argued, plastic goods were of a particularly special quality, not to be thrown a

About this title

Book Description

"Rubin makes a major contribution to the historiography of communism through an innovative approach to consumer culture. His breezy writing style makes the subject come alive. A very fine book."--Konrad H. Jarausch, author of The Rush to Unite Germany

About the Author

Eli Rubin is currently visiting scholar at the Zentrum fur Zeithistorische Forschung and fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin. He is assistant professor of history at Western Michigan University.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0807832383
• ISBN 13: 9780807832387
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304