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First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
A broad discussion about how history and religion contribute to identity politics in contemporary Europe, this book provides case studies exemplifying how public intellectuals and academics have taken an active part in the construction of recent and traditional pasts. Instead of repeating the simplistic explanation as a return of religion, this volume focuses on public platforms and agents and their use of religion as a political and cultural argument. Filled with previously unpublished data gathered from texts, interviews, field observations, artifacts, and material culture, this record challenges stereotypical images of East and Southeast Europe.
Eastern Eurpoe in the Cold War enjoyed its sexual liberation. In Czechoslovakia, this liberation came from above, mediated by experts.
Sixteen essays “apply the intersectional theory in an inspiring way in the analysis of gender issues in the past and in contemporary Czech society” (Aspasia). In this wide-ranging study of women’s and gender issues in the pre- and post-1989 Czech Republic, contributors engage with current feminist debates and theories of nation and identity to examine the historical and cultural transformations of Czech feminism. This collection of essays by leading scholars, artists, and activists, explores such topics as reproductive rights, state socialist welfare provisions, Czech women’s NGOs, anarchofeminism, human trafficking, LGBT politics, masculinity, feminist art, among others. Foregroundi...
How did the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia approach non-heterosexuality? How did young girls and boys come to realize their queer desires and identities within a state known for repressing individuality? What did they do with that self-awareness—and later on, as adults, what strategies did they employ in their everyday dealings with a state that defined homosexuality as a medical diagnosis? Queer Encounters with Communist Power answers these questions as it interweaves groundbreaking queer oral history with meticulous archival research into the discourses on homosexuality and transsexuality in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989.
This book is about state socialism, not as a political system, but as an "ecosystem" of interactions between the state and the citizens it sought to control. It includes case studies that demonstrate how the major ideological principles of socialism translated into motives guiding people's lives. This unique post-revisionist study focuses on people's lives and experiences rather than political systems. The studies are grouped around three common elements—socialist labor, the new socialist man, and the socialist way of life. Using first-hand accounts, the authors find minute deviations from the norms that eventually lead to renegotiation of the norms themselves. Focusing on routines, not extremes, they present socialism in its "normal" state. The volume demonstrates different national strategies for dealing with the past in the post-socialist world. Studies of the socialist past may strive to be objective, but their messages tend to be complex. Rather than arriving at one truth about the nature of socialism, this volume explores the many ways people have survived the system.
The second wave of feminism which challenged and changed many assumptions about the world in which we live was a product of various western cultures, with no single country possessing a monopoly on the writing of the texts that became the canonical statements of the 'new' feminism. Though many of the contributions to feminist scholarship that went on to become internationally significant hailed from Europe and the United States, these works were often formed within the context of local debates and framed within traditions of feminism and other political engagements specific to these nations. Transatlantic Conversations explores the differences yielded by such conditions and their consequence...
Building on the growing body of theoretical literature on the gendered nature of nationalism, this book offers a systematic examination of similarities and differences in the construction of gender and national identities in post-communist societies of Eastern and East Central Europe as well as established and the more stable democracies of Western Europe. It points to some of the key sources of inevitable tensions in the future united Europe, which stem from different perceptions of national and gender roles in different parts of the continent.
Eisenstein tracks developments such as racialized ethnic and gender conflict; the new male democracies of eastern Europe; the new Democrats of the Clinton era - exploring the `politics of hate'. In HATREDS, Zillah Eisenstein charts the plural politics of the twenty-first century, which she defines as having begun with the fall of communism and the gulf war. Exploring the politics of hate on both global and local levels, Eisenstein tracks developments such as racialized ethnic and gender conflict, the new male democracies of eastern Europe and the new Democrats of the Clinton era, the sexual exploitation of the west and the sexual violence of nationalisms, and the importance of western feminisms' promissory standpoint of freedom to women in the third world.
The epidemic of mass rape in the former Yugoslavia has illustrated once again, and in particularly brutal fashion, the inextricable relationship between national politics, sexual politics, and body politics. The nexus of these three forces is highly charged in any culture, at any time in history, but especially so among cultures in which rapid, even cataclysmic, changes in material realities and national self-conceptions are eroding or overwhelming previously secure boundaries. The postcommunist moment in the so-called Second World--Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--has dramatically exposed the opportunities and dangers that arise when the political, cultural, and econo...