From: "David Crowley" <[log in to unmask]>
Leisure and Luxury in Socialist Europe after 1945 (working title)
Call for papers
Leisure and Luxury in Socialist Europe after 1945 will be the third in a
series of edited volumes exploring the material culture and the spaces of
socialism in Eastern Central Europe (Style and Socialism. Modernity and
Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe, Berg, 2000; and Socialist
Spaces. Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, Berg, 2002 - see
www.bergpublishers.com). With a focus on the texture and material of
everyday experience, these books have tested the conventional models and
explanations of Soviet-type societies. They have brought together the work
of scholars from different disciplines including anthropology, social and
economic history, art history and cultural geography.
The roles of leisure and luxury in Soviet-type societies have yet to receive
thorough analysis, yet it is clear that both played central parts in the
relations between authority and people. The essays in Leisure and Luxury in
Socialist Europe after 1945 will debate the self-image of eastern Bloc
states as societies driven by production and principles of social justice,
as well as by Cold War projections which emphasised shortage and scarcity
and corrupt luxury in the Bloc. Leisure was sometimes claimed as a licensed
and organised product of socialist economics whereas, at other times, it was
tolerated as an 'emollient' in a society rent by shortage and social
tensions. The material signifiers of luxury - not least highly symbolic
commodities like furs and imported clothes - required careful ideological
negotiation to explain their presence and function in socialist societies.
This book will interrogate the public discourses of leisure and luxury and
the ways that they change!
d between the 1940s and the 1980s.
A particular emphasis of this book is on the material and visual qualities
of artefacts and spaces associated with leisure or identified as luxury.
Leisure and luxury were not simply matters of rhetoric and discourse: they
were materialised in things and in practices. We need to know more about
their production and consumption. How, for instance, can we account for the
particular forms of socialist advertising or socmodernist hotels? And what
were the regimes of signification? What materials or design, for instance,
signalled an imported product and what value was attached to such foreign
things?
What were the social, political and cultural effects of leisure and luxury?
What impact, for instance, did the limited but growing opportunities to
travel within the Bloc through the period have on those who enjoyed this
form of leisure and on their hosts? What were the effects of dacha ownership
on the individual and on society?
We welcome proposals of papers dealing with any aspects of leisure and
luxury in Central/ Eastern Europe in the post-1945 period. Papers can deal
with specific historical and social settings or offer comparative analysis
across location and time. We are particularly interested in receiving
contributions that emphasise the role of material things and spaces in the
discourses and practices connected with leisure and luxury.
The following bullet points indicate some of the areas that we would like to
feature in the volume. This list is in no sense an exclusive register of
subjects.
* Moral and ideological campaigns / discourse to shape consumption and
leisure;
* Theories of leisure or luxury generated within the Bloc during the period;
* Socialist advertising;
* Representations of shortage and/or excess abroad;
* Retailing whether in the form of street markets, hard-currency shops, or
'yellow curtain' shops for nomenclatura / party members;
* Fashion, whether literally in terms of modish dress or more generally as
'positional consumption';
* Ritualised luxury such as weddings and funerals;
* Gifts such 'grace and favour' housing and prizes awarded for productivity;
* Materials identified with luxury;
* Practices around luxury food consumption, for instance, tort [gateau];
* Dressing up;
* Dacha / chata life;
* Socialist tourism, with a focus on the artefacts and spaces associated
with it such as cruise ship cabin design, what to wear at the seaside,
souvenirs, postcards;
* The reception / consumption of television and other forms of popular
entertainment;
* Sites of organised leisure and culture such as cultural houses, hotels and
theatres.
We are soliciting contributions of no more than 7,000 words that could be
submitted in 12 months time. If you are interested in contributing to the
volume, please send an abstract of 200-400 words by 29th February 2004.
Please address proposals or queries to
Dr. Susan E. Reid
Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies
University of Sheffield
Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN
t: 0114 222 7400
f: 0114 222 7416
e: [log in to unmask]
David Crowley
Humanities
Royal College of Art
London SW7 2EU
t: 0207 590 4485
f: 0207 590 4490
e: [log in to unmask]
|