The Malleable Homo Sovieticus

The Malleable Homo Sovieticus PDF Author: Ewa T. Morawska
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Businessmen
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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The Malleable Homo Sovieticus

The Malleable Homo Sovieticus PDF Author: Ewa T. Morawska
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Businessmen
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Homo Sovieticus

Homo Sovieticus PDF Author: Aleksandr Zinoviev
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Soviet Union
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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The Capitalist Personality

The Capitalist Personality PDF Author: Christopher S. Swader
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135100675
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Modern capitalism favors values that undermine our face-to-face bonds with friends and family members. Focusing on the post-communist world, and comparing it to more "developed" societies, this book reveals the mixed effects of capitalist culture on interpersonal relationships. While most observers blame the egoism and asocial behavior found in new free-market societies on their communist pasts, this work shows how relationships are also threatened by the profit orientations and personal ambition unleashed by economic development. Successful people in societies as diverse as China, Russia, and Eastern Germany adjust to the market economy at a social cost, relaxing their morals in order to obtain success and succumbing to increased material temptations to exploit relationships for their own financial and professional gain. The capitalist personality is internally troubled as a result of this "sellout," but these qualms subside as it devalues intimate qualitative bonds with others. This book also shows that post-communists are similarly individualized as people living in Western societies. Capitalism may indeed favor values of independence, creativity, and self-expressiveness, but it also rewards self-centeredness, consumerism, and the stripping down of morality. As is the case in the West, capitalist culture fosters an internally conflicted and self-centered personality in post-communist societies.

Russian Jews on Three Continents

Russian Jews on Three Continents PDF Author: Larissa Remennick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351492217
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
In the early 1990s, more than 1.6 million Jews from the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Larissa Remennick relates the saga of their encounter with the economic marketplaces, lifestyles, and everyday cultures of their new homelands, drawing on comparative sociological research among Russian-Jewish immigrants.Although citizens of Jewish origin ostensibly left the former Soviet Union to flee persecution and join their co-religionists, Israeli, North American, and German Jews were universally disappointed by the new arrivals' tenuous Jewish identity. In turn, Russian Jews, whose identity had been shaped by seventy years of secular education and assimilation into the Soviet mainstream, hoped to be accepted as ambitious and hard working individuals seeking better lives. These divergent expectations shaped lines of conflict between Russian-speaking Jews and the Jewish communities of the receiving countries.Since her own immigration to Israel from Moscow in 1991, Remennick has been both a participant and an observer of this saga. This is the first attempt to compare resettlement and integration experiences of a single ethnic community (former Soviet Jews) in various global destinations. It also analyzes their emerging transnational lifestyles. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book opens new perspectives for a diverse readership, including sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, Slavic scholars, and Jewish studies specialists.

Capitalism from Outside?

Capitalism from Outside? PDF Author: Violetta Zentai
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155053715
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Does capitalism emerging in Eastern Europe need as solid ethnic or spiritual foundations as some other "Great Transformations" in the past? Apparently, one can become an actor of the new capitalist game without belonging to the German, Jewish, or, to take a timely example, Chinese minority. Nor does one have to go to a Protestant church every Sunday, repeat Confucian truisms when falling asleep, or study Adam Smith's teachings on the virtues of the market in a business course. He/she may just follow certain quasi-capitalist routines acquired during communism and import capitalist culture (more exactly, various capitalist cultures) in the form of down-to-earth cultural practices embedded in freshly borrowed economic and political institutions. Does capitalism come from outside? Why do then so many analysts talk about hybridization? This volume offers empirical insights into the current cultural history of the Eastern European economies in three fields: entrepreneurship, state governance and economic science. The chapters are based on large case studies prepared in the framework of an eight-country research project (funded by the European Commission, and directed jointly by the Center for Public Policy at the Central European University and the Institute for Human Sciences) on East-West cultural encounters in the ex-communist economies.

The Kaliningrad Challenge

The Kaliningrad Challenge PDF Author: Hanne-Margret Birckenbach
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 9783825866501
Category : European Union countries
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The Kaliningradskaya Oblast, Russia's Baltic enclave which soon will turn into an island amid the enlarged EU and NATO, constitutes a twofold challenge to European politics: Due to its economic, social, historical, geographical, strategic, and cultural peculiarities the detached region may become a source of instability. However, due to the same peculiarities the region also bears the potential to serve as a pilot-region for an EU-Russian partnership. To meet the latter perspective all actors concerned need to engage in a dialogue-based, coordinated, and problem-solving approach. This study provides recommendations to a wide range of actors on how to approach the Kaliningrad challenge in a proactive manner. It presents a policy paper drafted by a group of Kaliningrad experts from eight countries and is complemented by fourteen issue-oriented chapters which provide in-depth reasoning on the suggestions made by the group. Hanne-Margret Birckenbach is professor of political sciences at the University of Giessen, Germany. Christian Wellmann is deputy director of SHIP--The Schleswig-Holstein Institute for Peace Research, Germany.

Women and the Birth of Russian Capitalism

Women and the Birth of Russian Capitalism PDF Author: Irina Mukhina
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 1501758152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Little has been known, acknowledged, or studied about the shuttle trade, one of the major manifestations of new Russian life of the 1990s. The term itself seems to suggest something of a rather small scale. Indeed, the amount of each transaction in this trade was miniscule. Individual peddlers traveled to near-abroad with their bulging bags and brought back home for resale only as many goods as they could personally carry in their enormous suitcases. The phenomenon hidden behind the term "shuttle trade" was by no means insignificant or small in scale. By the mid-1990s, it constituted the backbone of Russian consumer trade and was a substantial source of revenue. The primary participants in the shuttle trade were women, and in this enlightening study Mukhina assesses the reasons why women were attracted to this business, the range of the personal experiences of female shuttle traders, and the social impact of women's involvement in this sort of economic activity. By analyzing the social and gendered dimensions of the shuttle trade, the reader can begin to understand more broadly how gender shaped the "transition" period associated with the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the difficulties that these women faced highlight the gap between the rhetoric of free market economy and the actual market practices. These women-traders had to create and shape the physical market (an open-air space) for their goods without the basic legislative and other provisions of market economies. The shuttle trade became an avenue of female suffering but also of survival and even empowerment during the time that most Russians now call "the wild 1990s."

The Social Impact of Informal Economies in Eastern Europe

The Social Impact of Informal Economies in Eastern Europe PDF Author: Manuela Stanculescu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351763989
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2002. In State socialist societies, informal economies were essential for the functioning of the economy as well as for household provision. Since the beginning of social transformation they have been flourishing better than ever before. They are a main outlet on the market for the newly emerging middle classes, stabilize the situation of many workers and pensioners, and in countries on the downward slope they are essential for the survival of large impoverished groups. Presenting recent research on the social importance of informal economies, especially in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Russia, the editors give a short introduction for each country, and a common compilation of basic economic and social data follows in the appendix. Household strategies in the ’shadow’, groups of informal winners and losers, informal employment in town and countryside, outcomes from informal activities, the macro-economic importance of informal economies, and researching methods are all investigated.

When Informal Institutions Change

When Informal Institutions Change PDF Author: Huseyn Aliyev
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472130471
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Reveals the impact of institutional change on informal practices in three transitional post-Soviet regimes: Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine

Foggy Social Structures

Foggy Social Structures PDF Author: Michael Bommes
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9089643419
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
European countries are currently involved in several irregular migration systems, resulting in undocumented populations estimated at several millions. They manage to live and work for years without a certified identity -- a phenomenon that challenges existing notions of political statehood and societal membership. Drawing on empirical studies carried out in a variety of settings, the authors of this illuminating study analyse the ways in which such irregular migration systems developed over time, interacting with changes in European labour markets, welfare regimes and immigration policies.