Lost in Transition
eBook - PDF

Lost in Transition

Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Lost in Transition

Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism

About this book

Lost in Transition tells of ordinary lives upended by the collapse of communism. Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences with Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why it is that so many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past. Ghodsee uses Bulgaria, the Eastern European nation where she has spent the most time, as a lens for exploring the broader transition from communism to democracy. She locates the growing nostalgia for the communist era in the disastrous, disorienting way that the transition was handled. The privatization process was contested and chaotic. A few well-connected foreigners and a new local class of oligarchs and criminals used the uncertainty of the transition process to take formerly state-owned assets for themselves. Ordinary people inevitably felt that they had been robbed. Many people lost their jobs just as the state social-support system disappeared. Lost in Transition portrays one of the most dramatic upheavals in modern history by describing the ways that it interrupted the rhythms of everyday lives, leaving confusion, frustration, and insecurity in its wake.

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Yes, you can access Lost in Transition by Kristen Ghodsee in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Eastern European History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface. Echoes off the Iron Curtain
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction. The Road to Bulgaria, 1983-1990
  5. Chapter 1. Contraband, 1990
  6. Chapter 2. Kaloyan and Hristo, 1998
  7. Chapter 3. Her Lover in Cuba, 1999
  8. Chapter 4. Hair: Ethnographic Fiction
  9. Chapter 5. Shopaholic in Eastern Europe, 1998-2006
  10. Chapter 6. New Carpets of Old Kilims, 1999
  11. Chapter 7. Comrades, 2000
  12. Chapter 8. Petar Hails a Cab: Ethnographic Fiction
  13. Chapter 9. Basset Hounds in the Balkans, 2005
  14. Chapter 10. The Master of Conspiracies, 2005
  15. Chapter 11. An Explosion in Sofia, 2008
  16. Chapter 12. Coffee: Ethnographic Fiction
  17. Chapter 13. Kaloyan in Maine, 2009
  18. Chapter 14. Tito Trivia: Ethnographic Fiction
  19. Chapter 15. Pilgrims from Sofia to Zagreb, 2009
  20. Afterword. Lost in Transition, 2010
  21. Appendix. Timeline of Twentieth-Century Communism
  22. Further Reading