Besnik Pula
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781503605138
- eISBN:
- 9781503605985
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503605138.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Economy
Today, by a number of measures, the ex-socialist economies of Central and Eastern Europe are among the most globalized in the world. This book argues that the origins of Central and Eastern Europe’s ...
More
Today, by a number of measures, the ex-socialist economies of Central and Eastern Europe are among the most globalized in the world. This book argues that the origins of Central and Eastern Europe’s heavily transnationalized economies should be sought in their socialist past and the efforts of reformers in the 1970s and 1980s to expand ties between domestic industry and transnational corporations (TNCs). The book’s comparative-historical analysis examines the trajectories of six socialist and postsocialist economies, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The second part of the book focuses on the region’s deepening specialization in the 2000s as a TNC-dominated transnational manufacturing hub. It identifies three international market roles that the region’s state came to occupy in the transformation: assembly platform, intermediate producer, and combined. It explains divergence within the region through the comparative analysis of the politics of institutional adjustment after socialism.Less
Today, by a number of measures, the ex-socialist economies of Central and Eastern Europe are among the most globalized in the world. This book argues that the origins of Central and Eastern Europe’s heavily transnationalized economies should be sought in their socialist past and the efforts of reformers in the 1970s and 1980s to expand ties between domestic industry and transnational corporations (TNCs). The book’s comparative-historical analysis examines the trajectories of six socialist and postsocialist economies, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The second part of the book focuses on the region’s deepening specialization in the 2000s as a TNC-dominated transnational manufacturing hub. It identifies three international market roles that the region’s state came to occupy in the transformation: assembly platform, intermediate producer, and combined. It explains divergence within the region through the comparative analysis of the politics of institutional adjustment after socialism.
Qi Wang
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748692330
- eISBN:
- 9781474406390
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748692330.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book provides a historically informed examination of independent moving image works made between 1990 and 2010 in China. Showcasing an evolving personal mode of narrating memory, documenting ...
More
This book provides a historically informed examination of independent moving image works made between 1990 and 2010 in China. Showcasing an evolving personal mode of narrating memory, documenting reality, and inscribing subjectivity in over sixteen selected works that range from narrative film and documentary to experimental video and digital media (including a multimedia avant-garde play), this book presents a provocative portrait of the independent filmmakers as a peculiarly pained yet active group of historical subjects of the transitional, postsocialist era. Through a connected investigation of cultural and cinematic concepts including historical consciousness, personal memory, narrative, performance, subjectivity, spatiality, and the body, Wang weaves a critical narrative of the formation of a unique postsocialist cultural consciousness that enables independent cinema and media to become a highly significant and effective conduit for historical thinking in contemporary China. Covering filmmakers such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, Meng Jinghui, Wang Bing, Wang Guangli, Duan Jinchuan, Cui Zi'en, Shi Tou, and Tang Danhong, this book is essential reading for all students and scholars in Chinese film and culture.Less
This book provides a historically informed examination of independent moving image works made between 1990 and 2010 in China. Showcasing an evolving personal mode of narrating memory, documenting reality, and inscribing subjectivity in over sixteen selected works that range from narrative film and documentary to experimental video and digital media (including a multimedia avant-garde play), this book presents a provocative portrait of the independent filmmakers as a peculiarly pained yet active group of historical subjects of the transitional, postsocialist era. Through a connected investigation of cultural and cinematic concepts including historical consciousness, personal memory, narrative, performance, subjectivity, spatiality, and the body, Wang weaves a critical narrative of the formation of a unique postsocialist cultural consciousness that enables independent cinema and media to become a highly significant and effective conduit for historical thinking in contemporary China. Covering filmmakers such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, Meng Jinghui, Wang Bing, Wang Guangli, Duan Jinchuan, Cui Zi'en, Shi Tou, and Tang Danhong, this book is essential reading for all students and scholars in Chinese film and culture.
Tiantian Zheng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816691999
- eISBN:
- 9781452952499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816691999.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
By elucidating the historic continuities of diverse, malleable, ambiguous, and fluid sexual imaginations in China, chapter 1 critiques the postsocialist construction of heteronormativity and the ...
More
By elucidating the historic continuities of diverse, malleable, ambiguous, and fluid sexual imaginations in China, chapter 1 critiques the postsocialist construction of heteronormativity and the portrayal of homosexuality as a representation of a decadent lifestyle imported from the West. It argues that recasting the past and linking the past to the present can enrich our understanding of the present and challenge the current discourse. During the ancient and imperial periods in China, same-sex desires were deemed normal and were enjoyed by many emperors and upper-class scholars and bureaucrats. There was never a fixed or reified sexual identity linked to a certain sexual preference. Sexual fantasies during these many centuries in China were fluid, diverse, and in constant flux. At the turn of the twentieth century, the onslaught of Western medical knowledge changed this cultural tradition and indoctrinated in society heteronormativity and a pathologized and vilified vision of homosexuality. This inaugurated the repression of same-sex-attracted people during the Communist era. The normalizing of heterosexuality and disavowing of China’s past continued in the postsocialist era.Less
By elucidating the historic continuities of diverse, malleable, ambiguous, and fluid sexual imaginations in China, chapter 1 critiques the postsocialist construction of heteronormativity and the portrayal of homosexuality as a representation of a decadent lifestyle imported from the West. It argues that recasting the past and linking the past to the present can enrich our understanding of the present and challenge the current discourse. During the ancient and imperial periods in China, same-sex desires were deemed normal and were enjoyed by many emperors and upper-class scholars and bureaucrats. There was never a fixed or reified sexual identity linked to a certain sexual preference. Sexual fantasies during these many centuries in China were fluid, diverse, and in constant flux. At the turn of the twentieth century, the onslaught of Western medical knowledge changed this cultural tradition and indoctrinated in society heteronormativity and a pathologized and vilified vision of homosexuality. This inaugurated the repression of same-sex-attracted people during the Communist era. The normalizing of heterosexuality and disavowing of China’s past continued in the postsocialist era.
Anya Bernstein
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226072555
- eISBN:
- 9780226072692
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226072692.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This book explores religious transformation among a Siberian people known as Buryats across changing political economies. It argues that under conditions of rapid social transformation such as those ...
More
This book explores religious transformation among a Siberian people known as Buryats across changing political economies. It argues that under conditions of rapid social transformation such as those that accompanied the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, certain persons, and especially their bodies became key sites through which Buryats have articulated their relationship with the Russian state and the larger Tibeto-Mongol and Eurasian worlds. Despite the Russian government’s continuing reluctance to see their Buddhist subjects cross borders, Buryats have employed characteristically Buddhist “body politics” to maintain their long-standing mobility, which can both conform to and diplomatically challenge Russian logics of political rule. Through presenting particular case studies of such emblematic bodies— dead bodies of famous monks, temporary bodies of reincarnated lamas, ascetic and celibate bodies of Buddhist monastics, and dismembered bodies of lay disciples given as imaginary gifts to spirits— the book looks at the specific ways in which religion and politics have intersected in this context. This study is intended as a contribution to the growing literature on postsocialism and cross-disciplinary studies of sovereignty that focus on the body as a site of sovereign power, as well as new developments in Buddhist studies where issues related to embodiment have become a central focus of inquiry.Less
This book explores religious transformation among a Siberian people known as Buryats across changing political economies. It argues that under conditions of rapid social transformation such as those that accompanied the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, certain persons, and especially their bodies became key sites through which Buryats have articulated their relationship with the Russian state and the larger Tibeto-Mongol and Eurasian worlds. Despite the Russian government’s continuing reluctance to see their Buddhist subjects cross borders, Buryats have employed characteristically Buddhist “body politics” to maintain their long-standing mobility, which can both conform to and diplomatically challenge Russian logics of political rule. Through presenting particular case studies of such emblematic bodies— dead bodies of famous monks, temporary bodies of reincarnated lamas, ascetic and celibate bodies of Buddhist monastics, and dismembered bodies of lay disciples given as imaginary gifts to spirits— the book looks at the specific ways in which religion and politics have intersected in this context. This study is intended as a contribution to the growing literature on postsocialism and cross-disciplinary studies of sovereignty that focus on the body as a site of sovereign power, as well as new developments in Buddhist studies where issues related to embodiment have become a central focus of inquiry.
Anya Bernstein
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226072555
- eISBN:
- 9780226072692
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226072692.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This chapter continues the theme of bodies and gender, as the author joins Buryat pilgrims on a journey from the Drepung Monastery to Dharamsala, which some Buryats have recently made their home. The ...
More
This chapter continues the theme of bodies and gender, as the author joins Buryat pilgrims on a journey from the Drepung Monastery to Dharamsala, which some Buryats have recently made their home. The chapter discusses their engagement with the ritual of chöd. Asking why this practice has become a contested issue in the Buryat Buddhist self-fashioning, three reasons for this development are identified. First, it provides an outlet for lay Buddhists, particularly women, to engage in a meaningful Buddhist practice, simultaneously indigenous and cosmopolitan, traditional and modernist, from which they had been excluded by the monastic establishment. Second, chöd evidences a certain kind of necropolitics, as the dead are being re-theorized. Through entering into a ritual economy with the deceased, Buryat adepts reconfigure entire universes of meaning, as the living and the dead become linked into one interrelated chain of causality. Finally, considered through the lens of a gift exchange, chöd might reflect the changing notions of reciprocity, morality, and the market, characteristic for postsocialist societies. In other words, it is suggested that the prominence of this particular ritual is related to the three broad shifts essential to postsocialism: the transformations of the ideas of gender, the dead, and exchange.Less
This chapter continues the theme of bodies and gender, as the author joins Buryat pilgrims on a journey from the Drepung Monastery to Dharamsala, which some Buryats have recently made their home. The chapter discusses their engagement with the ritual of chöd. Asking why this practice has become a contested issue in the Buryat Buddhist self-fashioning, three reasons for this development are identified. First, it provides an outlet for lay Buddhists, particularly women, to engage in a meaningful Buddhist practice, simultaneously indigenous and cosmopolitan, traditional and modernist, from which they had been excluded by the monastic establishment. Second, chöd evidences a certain kind of necropolitics, as the dead are being re-theorized. Through entering into a ritual economy with the deceased, Buryat adepts reconfigure entire universes of meaning, as the living and the dead become linked into one interrelated chain of causality. Finally, considered through the lens of a gift exchange, chöd might reflect the changing notions of reciprocity, morality, and the market, characteristic for postsocialist societies. In other words, it is suggested that the prominence of this particular ritual is related to the three broad shifts essential to postsocialism: the transformations of the ideas of gender, the dead, and exchange.
Dimitris Dalakoglou
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781526109330
- eISBN:
- 9781526124234
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526109330.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter locates the importance of the anthropology of road and infrastructures at this stage of European history in order to understand the phenomena that are ongoing in the region and the ...
More
This chapter locates the importance of the anthropology of road and infrastructures at this stage of European history in order to understand the phenomena that are ongoing in the region and the importance of studying roads but also postsocialist migration and flows in the case of Albanian-Greek borders.Less
This chapter locates the importance of the anthropology of road and infrastructures at this stage of European history in order to understand the phenomena that are ongoing in the region and the importance of studying roads but also postsocialist migration and flows in the case of Albanian-Greek borders.
Qi Wang
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748692330
- eISBN:
- 9781474406390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748692330.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introduction opens the book with two highly symbolic anecdotes of cinematic imagination, respectively provided by filmmakers Cheng Qingsong and Wang Guangli who share a desire to rewrite the ...
More
The introduction opens the book with two highly symbolic anecdotes of cinematic imagination, respectively provided by filmmakers Cheng Qingsong and Wang Guangli who share a desire to rewrite the socialist past and understand postsocialism on a personal scale. The introduction then introduces the concept of the Forsaken Generation and explicates its peculiar historical consciousness as embodied in a much more personal and critical approach to history when compared with their older siblings found in the “educated youth” or the Fifth Generation. The Introduction concludes with an explication of the methodology used and a chapter outline.Less
The introduction opens the book with two highly symbolic anecdotes of cinematic imagination, respectively provided by filmmakers Cheng Qingsong and Wang Guangli who share a desire to rewrite the socialist past and understand postsocialism on a personal scale. The introduction then introduces the concept of the Forsaken Generation and explicates its peculiar historical consciousness as embodied in a much more personal and critical approach to history when compared with their older siblings found in the “educated youth” or the Fifth Generation. The Introduction concludes with an explication of the methodology used and a chapter outline.