10% off all books and free delivery over £50
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

Domesticating Revolution

View All Editions (1)

The selected edition of this book is not available to buy right now.
Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

Domesticating Revolution Synopsis

The collapse of state socialism in 1989 focused attention on the transition to democracy and capitalism in Eastern Europe. But for many people who actually lived through the transition, the changes were often disappointing. Perhaps none were more disappointed than the villagers of rural Bulgaria whose very lifestyles and identities were threatened by the transition. Domesticating Revolution explains this unexpected outcome through a detailed study of economic reform in one Bulgarian village, from the beginning of collectivization in the 1940s to decollectivization efforts in the 1990s.

Gerald Creed is the only American anthropologist to have conducted extended fieldwork in a single Bulgarian village both during and after the socialist era. This work has enabled him to document the precise connections between socialist practice and postsocialist developments. He suggests that by simply doing what they could to improve their difficult lot under socialism, Bulgarian villagers gradually domesticated the socialist system. This very achievement, however, set the stage for an ambivalent transition after 1989 as villagers sought to defend their earlier gains against new threats. Ironically, they appealed to domesticated socialism in a failed effort to domesticate the transition as well.

Domesticating Revolution will force scholars to rethink both their models of state socialism and their interpretations of the transition.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9780271017129
Publication date:
Author: Gerald W Creed
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Format: Hardback
Pagination: 304 pages
Genres: European history