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 cultural practices and artefacts, political agendas and economic policies in the post-1945 period. While most of the early research focused on the United States and to a smaller extent on Western Europe, recent work is capitalizing on the increased accessibility of primary sources from former socialist states. This growing body of work has not only broadened the geographical scope of the debate, but also raised a number of wider
conceptual and methodological issues. It brought to light some of the structural similarities between socialist and capitalist states and societies, as well as the continuities between post-1945 cultural histories and long-term historical trends, including the rise of modernity, popular sovereignty and mass production. By doing so, this literature also opened the venue for a more nuanced, culture-sensitive understanding of post-socialist transformation, and for a critical engagement with the `transitological´ accounts of the collapse of socialist regimes.
The proposed workshop and the ensuing edited collection, developed with the support of the COST A30 Action East of West: Setting a New Central and Eastern European Media Research Agenda, seeks to further the debate on these issues by focussing on the history of popular culture in socialist Eastern Europe. While a lot of interesting research is being conducted and published within the confines of the individual national and regional academic contexts, our initiative aims to stimulate cross-border networking and exchange, and possibly lay the grounds for broader generalizations about the cultural history of the region during the socialist period. The key issues we are interested in exploring include:
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. NEGITIATION, APPROPRIATION, 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 POST-SOCIALIST 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@ief.hr) and Sabina Mihelj (S.Mihelj@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.
Reana Senjkovic
Institut of Ethnology and Folklore Research
Subiceva 42
10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Reana@ief.hr
http://www.ief. hr/page.php? id=285&lang= en
Sabina Mihelj
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
S.Mihelj@lboro. ac.uk
http://www.lboro. ac.uk/department s/ss/staff/ mihelj.html
To dowload the CfP in a Word document follow this Link:
http://www.lboro. ac.uk/department s/ss/staff/ staff_biog/ HERA_PopularCult ureSocialism_ Poster[flyer].doc
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