Postsocialism
Title
Postsocialism
Author
Cullen Dunn, Elizabeth
Verdery, Katherine
Research Area
Social Institutions
Topic
Government Systems
Abstract
Postsocialism is not just the study of the period after the end of Communism. Like postcolonialism, it is an analytic, a way of looking at societies in both East and West that were shaped by state socialism and the Cold War. Focusing on capitalism's alter ego, postsocialism looks at how production, consumption, identity and sovereignty were shaped by the experience of one party rule and central planning, and it reflects critically on the enduring effects of socialist ideas about the role of state and market in social life. While the countries that were once grouped by their affiliation with Communism are now diverging, future research focuses on the reorganization of the “Second World” into donors and receivers within a new international order based on humanitarianism and development, on the role of bureaucratic governance in integrating former socialist countries into the EU, and on the crucial standpoint that socialist ideologies continue to provide outside neoliberal capitalism.