Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T13:07:31.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Goods and States: The Political Logic of State-Socialist Material Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2009

Krisztina Fehérváry
Krisztina Fehérváry
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon of nostalgie in the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:

It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 426 - 459
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Appadurai, A. 1986. Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value. In, Appadurai, A., ed., The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auslander, L. 1996. Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auslander, L.. 2002. “Jewish Taste”? Jews and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life in Paris and Berlin, 1933–1942. In, Koshar, Rudy, ed., Histories of Leisure. Oxford: Berg Press.Google Scholar
Bach, J. 2002. ‘The Taste Remains’: Consumption (N)ostalgia, and the Production of East Germany. Public Culture 14, 3: 545–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bánhelyi, K. 1983. Részletes Rendezési Terv [Detailed organization plan]. Dunaújváros, Hungary: Dunaújvárosi Tervező Iroda [Dunaújváros City Planning Office].Google Scholar
Bauman, Z. 1976. Socialism: The Active Utopia. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers.Google Scholar
Bauman, Z.. 1991. Living without an Alternative. The Political Quarterly 62, 1: 35–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, W. 2003. Good Bye Lenin! Film. Germany: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment.Google Scholar
Berdahl, D. 1999a. Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland. Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berdahl, D.. 1999b. ‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things. Ethnos 64, 2: 192–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berdahl, D.. 2005. The Spirit of Capitalism and the Boundaries of Citizenship in Post-Wall Germany. Comparative Studies in Society and History 47: 235–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betts, P. 2000. The Twilight of the Idols: East German Memory and Material Culture. The Journal of Modern History 72: 731–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biró, Y. 1990. Landscape after Battle: Films from “the Other Europe.” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 199, 1: 161–82.Google Scholar
Borneman, J. 1991. After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Boyer, D. 2006. Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany. Public Culture 18, 2: 361–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchli, V. 1997. Khrushchev, Modernism, and the Fight against Petit-bourgeois Consciousness. Journal of Design History 10, 2: 161–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burawoy, M. and Lukács, J. 1992. The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary's Road to Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Caldwell, M. 2002. The Taste of Nationalism: Food Politics in Postsocialist Moscow. Ethnos 67, 3: 295–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrier, J. 1990. The Symbolism of Possession in Commodity Advertising. Man: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25: 693–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chelcea, L. 2002. The Culture of Shortage during State-Socialism: Consumption Practices in a Romanian Village in the 1980s. Cultural Studies 16, 1: 16–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, L. 2001. Citizens and Consumers in the U.S. in the Century of Mass Consumption. In, Daunton, M. and Hilton, M., eds., The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America. Oxford: Berg Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L.. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creed, G. 2002. (Consumer) Paradise Lost: Capitalist Dynamics and Disenchantment in Rural Bulgaria. Anthropology of East Europe Review 20, 2: n.p.Google Scholar
Crowley, D. 2000. Warsaw's Interiors. In, Reid, S. E. and Crowley, D., eds., Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Crowley, D. and Reid, S. E., eds. 2002. Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc. Oxford: Berg.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dessewffy, T. 2002. Speculators and Travelers: The Political Construction of the Tourist in the Kádár Regime. Cultural Studies 16, 1: 44–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drakulic, S. 1993. How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Dunaújvárosi hírlap: az MSZMP Városi Bizottsága és a Városi Tanács Iapja. Székesfehérvár: Fejér M. Hírlap Lapk., 1961–1990.Google Scholar
Dunaújvárosi hírlap: regionális napilap. Dunaújváros: Hírlap Press Kft. 1996–present.Google Scholar
Dunn, E. 2008. Postsocialist Spores: Disease, Bodies and the State in the Republic of Georgia. American Ethnologist 35, 2: 243–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehér, F., Heller, A., and Márkus, G.. 1983. Dictatorship over Needs. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Fehérváry, K. 2002. American Kitchens, Luxury Bathrooms and the Search for a ‘Normal’ Life in Post-Socialist Hungary. Ethnos 67, 3: 369–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehérváry, K.. 2006. Innocence Lost: Cinematic Representations of 1960s Consumerism for 1990s Hungary. Anthropology of East Europe Review 24, 2: 54–61.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S. 1999. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S.. 2000. Consumption and Civilization. In, Fitzpatrick, S., ed., Stalinism: New Directions. London, Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, R. 2005. Commodity Futures: Labor, Love and Value. Anthropology Today 21, 4: 8–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, M. S. 2008. In Moscow, Capitalism Now in Full Fashion. Christian Science Monitor. 21 Feb.: n.p.Google Scholar
Gal, S. and Kligman, G.. 2000. The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative-Historical Essay. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerő, A. and Pető, I.. 1999. Unfinished Socialism: Pictures from the Kádár Era.Patterson, James, trans. Budapest: Central European University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gille, Z. 2007. From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Postsocialist Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
György, P. 1992. The Mirror of Everyday Life, or the Will to a Period Style. In, Turai, H. and György, P., eds., Art and Society in the Age of Stalin. Budapest: Corvina.Google Scholar
Hammer, F. 2002. A Gasoline Scented Sinbad: The Truck-driver as Popular Hero in Socialist Hungary. Cultural Studies 16, 1: 80–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, P. 1974. Advertising and Socialism: The Nature and Extent of Consumer Advertising in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hessler, J. 2000. Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn towards Consumerism. In, Fitzpatrick, S., ed., Stalinism: New Directions. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hixson, W. L. 1997. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945–1961. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Humphrey, C. 2002. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huseby-Darvas, É. 2001. Hungarian Village Women in the Marketplace during the Late Socialist Period. In, Seligmann, L., ed., Women Traders in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Mediating Identities, Marketing Wares. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Iordanova, D. 2003. Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film. London: Wallflower Press.Google Scholar
Keane, W. 2003. Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things. Language and Communication 23: 409–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W.. 2006. Subjects and Objects. In, Tilly, C. et al. , eds., Handbook of Material Culture. London and Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kelly, C. and Volkov, V.. 1998. Directed Desires: Kul'turnost and Consumption. In Kelly, C. and Shepherd, D., eds., Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881–1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I. 1986. The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Cultural Progress. In, Appadurai, A., ed., The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kornai, J. 1992. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lakáskultúra. 1964–1987. Budapest: A Belkereskedelmi Minisztérium Lakberendezési Bizottságának folyóirata, 1987–1989. Budapest: Pallas. 1989–present. Budapest: Axel Springer Budapest KFT.Google Scholar
Lampland, M. 1995. The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lemon, A. 1998. “Your Eyes are Green Like Dollars”: Counterfeit Cash, National Substance, and Currency Apartheid in 1990s Russia. Cultural Anthropology 13, 1: 22–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingston, J. 1998. Modern Subjectivity and Consumer Culture. In, Strasser, S.McGovern, C., and Judt, M., eds., Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Manning, P. 2007. Rose-Colored Glasses? Color Revolutions and Cartoon Chaos in Postsocialist Georgia. Cultural Anthropology 22, 2: 171–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, P. and Uplisashvili, A.. 2007. Our Beer: Ethnographic Brands in Postsocialist Georgia. American Ethnologist 109: 626–41.Google Scholar
Merkel, I. 1998. Consumer Culture in the GDR, or How the Struggle for Antimodernity Was Lost on the Battleground of Consumer Culture. In, Strasser, S.McGovern, C., and Judt, M., eds., Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Merkel, I.. 2006. From Stigma to Cult: Changing Meanings in East German Consumer Culture. In Trentmann, F., ed., The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Miller, D. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Miller, D., ed. 2005. Materiality. Durham: Duke University PressGoogle Scholar
Milosz, C. 1990 [1953]. The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage International.Google Scholar
Moore, R. 2003. From Genericide to Viral Marketing: On ‘Brand.’ Language and Communication 23: 331–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munn, N. 1986. The Fame of Gawa. A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Nadkarni, M. N.d. “But It's Ours”: Nostalgia and the Politics of Authenticity in Postsocialist Hungary. In, Gille, Z. and Todorova, M., eds., Postcommunist Nostalgia. Forthcoming, 2009.Google Scholar
Nadkarni, M. and Shevchenko, O. 2004. The Politics of Nostalgia: A Case for Comparative Analysis of Post-Socialist Practices. Ab Imperio 2: 487–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nők lapja: az MNDSZ képes hetilapja. Budapest: Állami Lapk., 1949–1989.Google Scholar
Packard, V. 1960. The Waste Makers. New York: McKay Co.Google Scholar
Papp, G. Z. 1998. Budapest Retró: Életképek a 60-as, 70-es Evekböl (Budapest retro: Genres from the 60s and 70s). Video. Budapest, Hungary: Bologna Film.Google Scholar
Patico, J. 2005. To Be Happy in a Mercedes: Tropes of Value and Ambivalent Visions of Marketization. American Ethnologist 32: 479–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, P. H. 2001. The New Class: Consumer Culture under Socialism and the Unmaking of the Yugoslav Dream, 1945–1991. Ph.D. diss, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Pence, K. and Betts, P.. 2008. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pesmen, D. 2000. Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, S. E. and Crowley, D., eds. 2000. Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. 1972. Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Sampson, S. L. 1985–1986. The Informal Sector in Eastern Europe. Telos 66: 44–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, J. 1994. In and Out of Polyester. Anthropology Today 10, 4: 2–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparke, P. 1986. An Introduction to Design and Culture in the 20th Century. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Stade, R. 1993. Designs of Identity: Politics of Aesthetics in the GDR. Ethnos 58, 3–4: 241–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swain, N. 1992. Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism. London, Verso.Google Scholar
Szalkai, S. 1980. Kojak Budapesten (Kojak in Budapest). Film. Budapest, Hungary: Budapest Stúdió.Google Scholar
Tímár, P. 1997. Csinibaba (Dollybirds). Film. Budapest, Hungary: Magyar Mozgókép Alapítvány (MMA).Google Scholar
Vadas, J. 1992. A Magyarbútor Száz Éve: típus és modernizáció (One hundred years of Hungarian furniture: Type and modernization). Budapest: Fortuna.Google Scholar
Veenis, M. 1999. Consumption in East Germany: The Seduction and Betrayal of Things. The Journal of Material Culture 4, 1: 79–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdery, K. 1991. Theorizing Socialism. American Ethnologist 18, 3: 419–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdery, K.. 1996. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vörös, M. 1997. Életmód, ideológia, háztartás: A fogyasztáskutatás politikuma az állam-szocializmus korszakában (Lifestyle, ideology, and household: The politics of consumption research during the state-socialist era). Replika 26: 17–30.Google Scholar
Weiner, A. 1985. Inalienable Wealth. American Ethnologist 12, 2: 210–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wessely, A. 2002. Travelling People, Travelling Objects. Cultural Studies 16, 1: 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yurchak, A. 2006. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zatlin, J. 2007. The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar