The Curtain Rises: Rethinking Culture, Ideology, and the State in Eastern Europe

Examines the dynamics underlying recent upheavals in Russia and Eastern Europe. The contributors integrate anthropological observation of Eastern European societies in transition with fresh interpretations of social theory drawn from Marxist, feminist and postmodern traditions.

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.