[Oberlist] HR/UK/HU* CfP: Popular Culture and Socialism(s)

Vin Iun 27 01:38:11 CEST 2008

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [balkans] CfP: Popular Culture and Socialism(s)
From:    "S.Mihelj" <S.Mihelj la lboro.ac.uk>
Date:    Mon, June 23, 2008 19:47
To:      balkans la yahoogroups.com
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Dear All,
(Apologies for cross-posting)
I would like to draw your attention to the attached CfP
(also copy-pasted below).
Regards,
Sabina Mihelj

POPULAR CULTURE AND SOCIALISM(S)
Call for proposals for contributions to an edited
collection

Since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the socialist
regimes of Eastern Europe passed into history, at least
two major developments have taken place in the realm of
Cold War studies, and more broadly in our understanding of
20th century history. One was spurred by the opening
archives in the former Eastern block, which greatly
increased the opportunities for international and
comparative research on the Cold War, and gave rise to
important reinterpretations of key historical events and
processes in this period. The other major development
involves a growing acknowledgment of the role of culture
in the clash between communism and capitalism. Its
proponents argue that mainstream approaches have perceived
the Cold War primarily, and often exclusively, as a
military, political and economic conflict, and missed the
importance of factors such as religion, sports, education,
literature, film, radio, television and consumerism.

Over the past two decades, historians, sociologists, art
critics, anthropologists and media scholars have
contributed to a veritable outpouring of publications
exploring the complex relationships between political
agendas, economic policies and cultural practices.
Initially, most studies of Cold War culture have focused
on the United States (e.g. Whitfield 1991, Wagnleitner
1994, Saunders 1999, Schwartz 2000), and to a smaller
extent on Western Europe (e.g. Duggan and Wagstaff 1995,
Nelson 1997, Scott-Smith and Krabbendam 2003). More
recently, some scholars have began capitalizing on the
increased accessibility of primary sources from former
socialist states (e.g. Reid and Crowley 2000, Crewe 2003),
and developed thought-provoking accounts of the cultural
Cold War spanning both the West and the East (e.g.
Buck-Morss 2000, Poiger 2000, Caute 2003, Mitter and Major
2004).

This growing body of work has not only broadened the
geographical scope of the debate about the cultural Cold
War, but also raised a number of wider conceptual and
methodological issues. To start with, it questioned the
value of understanding the socialist period as a
deviation from the supposedly normal course of
historical development, as well as challenged the
usefulness of treating the Cold War as a distinct
historical period. Instead, it highlighted the
continuities between post-1945 cultural histories and
long-term historical trends, including the rise of
modernity, popular sovereignty and mass production.
Furthermore, this body of literature also highlighted some
of the structural similarities between the developments in
the East and the West, and thereby questioned the rigid
and often highly value-laden East-West distinction. Last
but not least, this literature also opened the venue for a
more nuanced understanding of post-socialist
transformation, and for a critical engagement with the
transitological accounts of the collapse of socialist
regimes. It is becoming increasingly clear that the
processes of transformation in post-socialist Eastern
Europe are far from uniform, and instead differ depending
on the particularities of both pre- and post-World War II
trajectories of individual countries (Pickels and Smith
1998, Stark and Bruszt 1998). Depending on these
trajectories, the post-socialist societies are equipped
with specific forms of economic, social as well as
cultural capital which all influence their reaction to, or
appropriation of, the liberal capitalist modus operandi
(Blokker 2005).

The proposed edited collection seeks to further the debate
on these issues by focussing on the history of popular
culture in socialist Eastern Europe, as well as its
legacies in the post-socialist period. We would welcome
contributions addressing one or more of the following
issues:
1. POLITICS, IDEOLOGY AND POPULAR CULTURE: What were the
key ideological attitudes of the political establishment
and the socialist intelligentsia towards popular or
mass culture? How have they changed over time, and how
did they differ from country to country? To what extent
did these attitudes differ from those held by the
political and cultural elites in the West? How have they
shaped the cultural and media policies in socialist
countries?
2. POPULAR CULTURE AND LEGITIMACY: To what extent did the
socialist regimes accommodate the increasing demand for
popular culture and consumer products among the
population, and to what extent can this be seen as a
(successful) attempt at addressing the lack of popular
legitimacy? Or, in other words: were popular culture and
consumerism always inherently subversive, or were they
also used as a tool of internal legitimation and
consolidation of socialist regimes?
3. NEGOTIATION, APPROPRIATION, AND RESISTANCE: How did
either the producers or the consumers of popular culture
adapt to the limits imposed by socialist cultural
policies? How popular were the popular culture products
sanctioned and promoted by the socialist regimes? What
practices of adaptation, negotiation or resistance can be
discerned (e.g. cynicism/kynism, irony, dialogic farce
etc.), and how influential were they in undermining the of
legitimacy socialist regimes?
4. CROSS-BORDER EXCHANGE: What were the major routes of
cross-border exchange of popular culture, both among the
socialist states themselves and across the Cold War divide
(e.g. transnational film and music distribution,
co-operation between national broadcasting organizations,
adaptation of foreign genres, formats and practices of
cultural production etc.)? How did these exchanges
contribute to the diversity and similarity of cultural
production across different socialist states as well as
across the Cold War divide?
5. WESTERN THEORIES AND SOCIALIST POPULAR CULTURE: How
useful are the concepts and theories of popular culture
developed in the West  particularly those coming from the
field of cultural studies  in understanding socialist
popular culture? What alternative theories and concepts
can we think of that can better elucidate the role of
popular culture in socialist states?
6. SOCIALIST POPULAR CULTURE, HISTORICAL CONTINUITIES, AND
POSTSOCIALIST DEVELOPMENTS: To what extent were the
different attitudes and responses to popular culture in
socialist Eastern Europe rooted in pre-World War II
cultural preferences and practices? What is the legacy of
socialist popular culture today, and how does it figure in
various nostalgic recollections of the period (Ostalgie,
Yugonostalgia etc.)? To what extent did the post-communist
societies inherit the structures of feeling (Williams
1961) established through the socialist popular culture?

Ideally, we would like all contributions to be both
empirically grounded and theoretically informed. Please
send your proposals (800-1000 words) with a brief
Curriculum Vitae (1 x A4) to Reana Senjkovic
(reana la ief.hr) and Sabina Mihelj (S.Mihelj la lboro.ac.uk) by
October 31, 2008. We will inform you about our decision by
December 15, and if your proposal is accepted, we will
expect a first draft by the end of May 2009, and a final
manuscript by the end of September 2009.

We are currently in the process of securing funding for a
small workshop that will allow us to discuss the first
drafts and the possible ways of weaving them together into
a coherent book. The workshop will be organized in
Budapest, Hungary, in June 2009. Further details will
follow after the submission of abstracts.

REANA SENJKOVIC, Institut of Ethnology and Folklore
Research, Subiceva 42, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Website: http://www.ief.hr/page.php?id=285&lang=en

SABINA MIHELJ, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough
University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Website:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/staff/mihelj.html

REFERENCES:
Blokker, Paul. 2005. "Post-Communist Modernization,
Transition Studies, and Diversity in Europe", European
Journal of Social Theory 8(4): 503-525.
Buck Morss, Susan. 2000. Dreamworld and Catastrophe. the
Passing of Mass Utopia in the East and West. Cambridge and
London: MIT Press.
Burawoy, Michel and Katherine Verdery (eds). 1999.
Uncertain Transition. Ethnographies of Change in the
Postsocialist World, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Caute, David. 2003. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for
Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press.
Crewe, David (ed.). 2003. Consuming Germany in the Cold
War, Oxford: Berg.
Duggan, Christopher and Christopher Wagstaff (eds.). 1995.
Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society,
1948-58. Oxford: Berg.
Mitter, Rana and Patrick Major (eds.). 2004. Across the
Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History. London: Frank
Cass.
Nelson, Michael. 1997. War of the Black Heavens: The
Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War. Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press.
Pickles, John and Adrian Smith. 1998. Theorising
Transition: The political Economy of Post-Communist
Transformations. London: Routledge.
Poiger, Uta G.. 2000. Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War
Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany.
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California
Press.
Reid, Susan E. and David Crowley (eds.). 2000. Style and
Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War
Eastern Europe. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Saunders, Frances Stonor. 1999. Who Paid the Piper? The
CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta.
Schwartz, Rixhard A.. 2000. Cold War Culture: Media dn the
Arts, 1945-1990. New York: Checkmark Books.
Scott-Smith, Giles and Hans Krabbendam (eds.). 2003. The
Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 19451960. London:
Frank Cass.
Stark, David and Laszlo Bruszt. 1998. Postsocialist
Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East
Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagnleitner, Reinhold. 1994. Coca-Colonization and the
Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in
Austria after the Second World War. London: University of
North Carolina Press.
Whitfield, Stephen J.. 1991. The Culture of the Cold War.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Williams Raymond. 1961. The Long Revolution ("Analysis of
Culture"), London: Chatto & Windus.

--

Dr. Sabina Mihelj
Lecturer in Media, Communication and Culture
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough University
LE 11 3TU Loughborough
UK
Website:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/staff/mihelj.html

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