Dear CAPITAL-AND-CLASS Subscribers,
I hope the following will be of interest to you:
Getting By in Postsocialist Romania
Labor, the
Body, and Working-Class Culture
David A. Kideckel
A poignant portrayal of the price of
postsocialist transition for industrial workers
"David Kideckel challenges celebratory images of postsocialism by
focusing on the often neglected working class and allowing the disenfranchised
to speak for themselves. In so doing he provides a contribution to the
ethnography of eastern Europe that speaks poignantly to broader discussions of
work, class, and gender under neoliberalism." —Gerald Creed, Hunter College and
the Graduate Center, City University of New York
This compelling ethnographic study describes how two groups of Romanian
industrial workers have fared since the end of socialism. Once labor's elite,
the celebrated coal miners of the Jiu Valley and the chemical workers of the
Făgăraş region had many social privileges and often derived genuine satisfaction
from their work. Today, they are a rarely noted casualty of postsocialist
transformations. Fear, distance, and alienation are the physical manifestations
of stress experienced due to their precarious job status, declining health, and
loss of a social safety net. Kideckel traces these issues in the context of
labor, political relationships, domestic and community life, gender identities,
and health. Drawing on more than three decades of fieldwork, he presents many
narratives from select individuals, in their own words, providing a poignant and
illuminating perspective on the everyday lives of ordinary people.
David A. Kideckel is Professor of Anthropology at Central Connecticut
State University. He is author of The Solitude of Collectivism: Romanian
Villagers to the Revolution and Beyond and has produced a video documentary
focusing on Romania's Jiu Valley coal miners, entitled Days of the Miners: Life
and Death of a Working Class Culture.
Series: New Anthropologies of Europe
Publication date:
2008
Format: paper 288 pages, 11 b&w photos, 2 maps, 6 1/8 x 9
1/4
ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21940-4
ISBN: 0-253-21940-X
PRICE: £13.99 PAPER