Reconceptualizing the Social: East Central Europe and the New Sociocultural History Repenser le social : l'Europe du Centre-Est et la nouvelle histoire socioculturelle Die Wiederverjüngung des Sozialen: Ostmitteleuropa und die neue sozio-kulturelle Geschichte

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Constantin Iordachi
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociocultural History

Social Participation and Health among Ageing People in East-Central Europe

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Makai ◽  
Viktória Prémusz ◽  
Kata Füge ◽  
Mária Figler ◽  
Kinga Lampek
Keyword(s):  
Health Status ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Participation ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Social

Abstract In this study we examined the health of the ageing population of East-Central Europe. Data derived from the 6th round of the European Social Survey. The aim of our research was to examine the most important factors that determine ageing people’s health status. We paid particular attention to the social ties of our target group.

scholarly journals Modernist architects and the age of extremes in Eastern Europe, 1920-1950: Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-414
Author(s):  
Martin Kohlrausch ◽  
Daria Bocharnikova
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Social Visions ◽  
Post War ◽  
Ideological Tensions

This article demonstrates the social and political impact of modernist architects in Europe’s age of extremes beyond the narrower confines of architecture. In East Central Europe with its ideological tensions, massive socio-political ruptures and eventually the establishment of communist regimes, architects’ social visions and the states’ aspirations led to intense interactions as well as strong controversies. In order to unravel these, we stress the relevance of modernism as a belief and knowledge system. In so doing we point to often unacknowledged continuities between the interwar and the immediate post-war period thus re-politicising the work of modernist architects as a project of worldmaking in the context of competing ideologies and sociotechnical imaginaries.

The Joy of Everyday Life: Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life in the Socialist Dictatorships

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 185-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Apor
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
Life Styles ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Generation

In the last two decades, historians have faced difficult methodological challenges in exploring former party archives in East Central Europe and in reconstructing the political history of communist regimes. A remarkable answer to this challenge has been provided by a new generation of historians who turned their attention to the social history of socialist dictatorships in East Central Europe, and took a peculiar interest in the “small,” the “mundane” and the “insignificant” of everyday life under communism. Their laborious research has focused not on high politics, but on local communities. Their works deconstructed the life-styles, living conditions, fashion and dressing, leisure, tourism and consumption, sexual habits and childcare of ordinary people. The current study provides a historiographic overview of the major thematic and methodological orientations of the history of the everyday life in socialist dictatorships. It focuses on two distinct but overlapping directions of research: the analysis of the daily habitual organization of communist societies; and the communist authorities’ attempt at a micro-politics of everyday life. The study argues that, while the new social history of the socialist dictatorships has greatly added to our understanding of significant aspects of the social and political structure of these countries, it has also constructed a representation of everyday life as essentially impertinent to power. In doing so, it ignored the capacity of habitual social and cultural behavior in producing techniques of control and discipline.

scholarly journals Neighbourhood Policy vs. Remembrance Policy: Romania and Hungary

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Barna Bodó
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
European Situation ◽  
Determining Factor

Abstract In East-Central Europe, the past has always been a determining factor as a framework for interpretation: the social construction of the past often serves (served) current political purposes. It is no wonder that in the countries of the region, often different, sometimes contradictory interpretations of the past have emerged. In today’s European situation, however, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are perhaps most keenly faced by the transformation of Europe, with unclear, chaotic ideas dominating political and intellectual markets instead of previous (accepted) values – in the tension between old and new, Europe’s future is at stake. The question is: what role the states of Central and Eastern Europe play/can play, to what extent they will be able to place the neighbourhood policy alongside (perhaps in front of) the policy of remembrance and seek common answers to Europe’s great dilemmas.

Reconceptualizing the Social: East Central Europe and the New Sociocultural History

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantin Iordachi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Future Research ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe

This introductory essay reviews recent debates on social history, with a focus on the revival of this field of studies in post-communist East Central Europe and its potential impact on rejuvenating approaches to the social history of Europe. The first part of the essay provides a brief overview of the emergence of social history as a reaction to the dominant political history of the nineteenth century and its crystallization in different national schools, and highlights recent responses to the poststructuralist and postmodern critiques of “the social.” The second part focuses on traditions of social history research in East Central Europe, taking Poland and Romania as main examples. The third part summarizes the main claims of the articles included in this issue and evaluates their implications for future research. It is argued that, at first glance, post-communist historiography in East Central Europe provides the picture of a discipline in transformation, still struggling to break up with the past and to rebuild its institutional framework, catching up with recent trends and redefining its role in continental and global historiography. The recent attempts to invigorate research in traditional fields of social history might seem largely obsolete, not only out of tune with international developments but also futile reiterations of vistas that have been for long experimented with and superseded in Western Europe. At closer scrutiny, however, historiography in East Central Europe appears—unequal and variegated as it is—as a laboratory for historical innovation and a field of experimentation, and interaction of scholars from various disciplines and scholarly traditions, in which old and new trends amalgamate in peculiar ways. It is suggested that the tendency to reconceptualize the “social” that we currently witness in humanities and social sciences worldwide could be not only reinforced but also cross-fertilized by the “social turn” in East Central Europe, potentially leading to novel approaches.

scholarly journals Travel Writing and the Integration of East-Central Europe: John Paget’s Hungary and Transylvania

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Márta Pellérdi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
The West ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Social

John Paget’s travelogue from 1839, Hungary and Transylvania; with Remarks on their Condition, Social, Political, and Economical, makes a clear distinction between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania, both under Austrian rule at the time, and the rest of Eastern Europe. In terms of the variety and depth of the descriptions of the social, political, and economic conditions in the East-CentralEuropean country and province, Paget’s comprehensive and objective text stands out from the travelogues written about the region in the nineteenth century. This essay demonstrates that Hungary and Transylvania reveals the author’s intention to rediscover the history and culture of a neglected European nation who have attempted for centuries, successfully, and often unsuccessfully, to orient their politics toward the West rather than the East. It suggests that despite the occasional colonial discourse, Paget’s travelogue is an attempt to economically, politically, and culturally promote the integration of Hungary and Transylvania into the more “civilized” West. (MP)

scholarly journals Not All Past is Legacy: Echoes of 1917–1923 in Contemporary East Central Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Maciej Górny
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Main Tool ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Great War

Abstract The article discusses parallelisms between the social and political realities of East Central Europe around 1917–1923 and the current state of affairs. It starts with an analysis of the dynamic social relations in the final year of the Great War to follow with the question of their impact on politics and a short outline of the region’s history after 1918. While in terms of political and social reality there is little to invite comparison between these two periods under scrutiny, the language of politics and popular sentiments do. Most importantly, and similarly to East Central Europe in the interwar period, fear of a radical change (be it Bolshevism as in 1917–1923 or the cultural revolution) is the main tool of conservative mobilization which represents the sole actual danger to the existing social and political order.

scholarly journals Democracy revisited? Prospects of (liberal) democracy (not only) in the East-Central Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 793-814
Author(s):  
Ladislav Cabada
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
Illiberal Democracy ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Capture ◽  
Hybrid Regime

Abstract Scholarly debate about the prospects of democracy have undergone a fundamental change in the last three decades. While the period of the 1990s might be distinguished by extensive optimism, in the 2000s we can observe a distinct change towards a more restrained perception. Furthermore, the last decade might be evaluated as pessimistic in the social sciences on the grounds of economic recession after 2008 as well other crisis in an economic, societal and political senses. The rather distinctive terms used for the expression of doubts about the pro-democratic development and consolidation, such as ‘semi-consolidated’, ‘new’ or ‘young’ democracy, or de-democratisation, were replaced with more dramatic expressions such as illiberal democracy, democratic backsliding, hybrid, regime, soft dictatorship and ‘the light that failed’, as Krastev described the recent image of East-Central Europe in an almost dystopic manner. While in the 1990s the Slovak version of democratura – Mečiarism – was perceived as the exception, in the late 2010s populist neo-illiberal regimes became the dominant shape of regimes in (East)Central Europe. This review essay presents three recent analyses of the democratic backsliding and state capture (not only) in East-Central Europe and frames this presentation into the more extensive literature review.

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