Socialism

Cultural Anthroplogy has published several essays that address both the subject of socialism and the ethnographic processes of change and adaptation associated with postsocialism. As the year 1989 represents the juncture wherein socialism moved from the state of actually existing to existing in the past sense, this list goes roughly back to that date.

As background and to acquire a wider compass on this topic one might want to start first with Jonathan Friedman's essay on "History, Myth, and Political Identity." Similarly, Mayfair Yang's article provides a roadmap for understanding historical process, but with a particular focus on the socialist project in China. She describes Chinese socialism as not necessarily immaculately conceived but built upon a Chinese past, thus paving the way for us to understand Chinese futures as well.

The rest of the list spans diverse regions and varying issues in the postsocialist world, ethnographic situations that are bound by the realities of structural reorganization and/or changing economies. Dominic Boyer, John Borneman and Stefan Senders write on unified Germany. Lisa Rofel, Emily Chao, Louisa Schein, Erik Mueggler, Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang document a changing China and in Mueggler's case, how memory reconciles with the socialist past. On the countries of the former Soviet Union, Alexia Bloch addresses changing subjectivities in Siberia, Paul Manning on the relationship between the media and political movements in Georgia, and Alaina Lemon on material embodiments of change and continuity as they are represented through the use of hard cash in Russia.

Equally significant are ways in which socialism has created tensions and collusions in the field of cultural production. Outside the former Eastern Curtain, Jessica Winegar addresses the legacy of socialist and anticolonial nationalist government policy as she charts the entry of Egyptian arts into the global market. Her article is a comment on the new kinds of cultural sovereignty emerging in these global and neoliberal times.

American Stiob: Or, What Late Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal About Contemporary Political Culture in the West
Dominic Boyer and Alexei Yurchak
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2: 179-221.
Supplemental Material and Author Interview

Potato Ontology: Surviving Postsocialism in Russia
Nancy Ries
Cultural Anthropology May 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2: 181-212
Supplemental Material

Repossession: Notes on Restoration and Redemption in Ukraine's Western Borderland
Karolina Szmagalska-Follis
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 329-360.
Supplemental material

Rose-Colored Glasses? Color Revolutions and Cartoon Chaos in Postsocialist Georgia
Paul Manning
Cultural Anthropology May 2007, Vol. 22, No. 2: 171-213.
Supplemental material

Cultural Sovereignty in a Global Art Economy: Egyptian CulturalPolicy and the New Western Interest in Art from the Middle East
Jessica Winegar
Cultural Anthropology 2006, Vol. 21, No. 2: 173-204.

Biopolitical Beijing: Pleasure, Sovereignty, and Self-Cultivation in China's Capital
Judith Farquhar
Qicheng Zhang
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2005, Vol. 20, No. 3: 303-327.

Longing for the Kollektiv: Gender, Power, and ResidentialSchools in Central Siberia
Alexia Bloch
Cultural Anthropology 2005, Vol. 20, No. 4: 534-569.

Politics without a Head: Is the "Love Parade" a NewForm of Political Identification?
John Borneman
Stefan Senders
Cultural Anthropology 2000, Vol. 15, No. 2: 294-317.

On the Sedimentation and Accreditation of Social Knowledges of Difference: Mass Media, Journalism, and the Reproduction of East/West Alterities in Unified Germany
Dominic C. Boyer
Cultural Anthropology 2000, Vol. 15, No. 4: 459-491.

Performing Modernity
Louisa Schein
Cultural Anthropology August 1999, Vol. 14, Issue 3, pp. 361-395.

The Maoist Shaman and the Madman: Ritual Bricolage, Failed Ritual, and Failed Ritual Theory
Emily Chao
Cultural Anthropology, November 1999, Vol. 14, Issue 4, pp. 505-534.

"Your Eyes are Green like Dollars": Counterfeit Cash, National Substance, and Currency Apartheid in 1990s Russia
Alaina Lemon
Cultural Anthropology, 1998, Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 22-55.

Memory Work: Reconstituting the Ethnic in Post-Mao China
Ralph A. Litzinger
Cultural Anthropology, May 1998, Vol. 13, Issue 2, pp. 224-25.

A Carceral Regime: Violence and Social Memory in SouthwestChina
ErikMueggler
Cultural Anthropology, May 1998, Vol. 13, Issue 2, pp. 167-192.

Rethinking Modernity: Space and Factory Discipline in China
Lisa Rofel
Cultural Anthropology, 1992, Vol. 7, Issue 1, pp. 93-114.

Myth, History, and Political Identity
Jonathan Friedman
Cultural Anthropology, 1992, Vol. 7, Issue 2, pp. 194-210.

The Modernity of Power in the Chinese Socialist Order
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang
Cultural Anthropology, 1988, Vol. 3, Issue 4, pp. 408-427.

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