East-Central European Communities

This volume is an examination of economic privatization, the transformation of community social and political organization, and the changing community belief and identity systems essential to our understanding of the postsocialist transition. Contributors are drawn from virtually every eastern European nation. The fall of communism in eastern Europe has provoked a flurry of analyses and a surfeit of literature in every single social scientific domain. However, as this large body of work suggests, the question of change in local East European communities, especially in the rural areas, is one that has been much neglected, even though the fate of agriculture and rural communities sits at the base of a successful transition to a democratic market economy.East European Communities discusses economic change and agricultural privatization, the transformation of community social and political organization and control, and changing community belief and identity systems (including questions of class, gender, and ethnicity). This volume compares a wide range of diverse rural communities throughout eastern Europe with examples from nearly every eastern European nation. Each essay is ethnographically grounded and based on longitudinal research conducted during both the socialist epoch and the postsocialist period.