Description:
Against the historical backdrop of successive socialist and post-socialist claims to have completely remade society, the contributors to this volume explore the complex and often paradoxical continuities between diverse post-socialist presents and their corresponding socialist and pre-socialist pasts. The chapters focus on ways in which: pre-socialist economic, political, and cultural forms in fact endured an era of socialism and have found new life in the post-socialist present, notwithstanding revolutionary socialist claims; continuities with a pre-socialist past have been produced within the historical imaginary of post-socialism; and socialist economic, political, and cultural forms have in fact endured in a purportedly postsocialist era, despite the claims of neo-liberal reformers.
Brief description:
Harry G. West is Reader in Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His research in northern Mozambique has examined how colonialism, revolutionary socialism, and post-socialist political and economic liberalization have reconfigured institutions of local authority.
Review Quotes:
"...provides an important counterpoint to prevailing claims that socialism, in all its modes and meanings, was quickly abandoned by populations that were hungry to embrace the 'freedoms' of a market-oriented economy...reveals its ambitious scope and its broad, comparative approach toward understanding the complex anxieties and uncertainties that people continue to face in transforming societies." - Journal of Anthropological Research