For
a list of general anthropological literature on East / Central Europe, click
here.
For some additional
literature, click here.
For online literature about the anthropology of East / Central Europe on AnthroBase.com, click here.
Appadurai, Arjun (1986 [1995]): The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [General theory of consumption and the circulation of commodities.]
Appadurai, Arjun (1995): "The Production of Locality", in Richard Fardon (ed.): Counterworks. Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, p.204-223, London & New York: Routledge. [General theory of globalization, local communities and the nation.]
Blok, Anton (1974 [1975]): The Mafia of a Sicilian Village - 1860-1960. A Study in Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs, New York: Harper and Row. [A classical monograph about the Sicilian mafia, which contains interesting comparative points, if one is interested in mafia-like movements in East / Central Europe.]
Borneman, John (1992): Belonging in the Two Berlins. Kin, state, Nation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Comparative monograph of East and West Berlin, stressing the importance of generation difference.]
Boym, Svetlana (1994): Common Places. Mythologies and Everyday Life in Russia, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. [Discussion of common life and common values in the Soviet Union, including a discussion of "culture".]
Demirdirek, Hülya (1996): The Painful Past Retold. Social Memory in Azerbaijan and Gagauzia, Oslo: Photocopy. Published on www.anthrobase.com. [Conference paper comparing the treatment of social suffering and its memory in two peripheral areas of the former Soviet Union.]
Feschbach, Murray (1982): "Between the Lines of the 1979 Soviet Census", Problems of Communism, Vol. 31, January-February. [Analysis of the data in the 1979 census in the Soviet Union, which was one of the first signs that the system was approaching a crisis.]
Grant, Bruce (1995): In the Soviet House of Culture. A Century of Perestroikas, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Monograph from the Nivkhi on Sakhalin (South-Easternmost Siberia), stressing the changes and unpredictability of Soviet policies in a small, local community.]
Mars, Gerald and Yochanan Altman (1983): "The Cultural Bases of Soviet Georgia's Second Economy", Soviet Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4, p.546-560. [The article discusses the relationship between traditional cultural values and illegal and quasi-legal economy in Soviet Georgia (ca. 1980).]
Nielsen, Finn Sivert (1994): "Soviet Culture, Russian Kul'tura", in: Paper Presented at the Research Seminar: Continuity and Change in Post-Soviet Societies, October 1994. (Click here to see text on AnthroBase.com.) [A short conference paper, where I discuss the Soviet system as an alternative form of globalization, and the significance of "culture".]
Piki, A. I. and B. B. Prokhorova (eds.) (1994): "Neotraditionalism in the Russian North. To Enter the Future without Forgetting the Past", in: Neotradicionalizm na rossijskom severe. Etnicheskoe vozrozhdenie malochislennykh narodov Severa i gosudarstvennaja regional'naja politika, p.177-190, Moskva. [English summary of a small book on neotraditionalism among Siberian people. Can be copied from FSN. I also have the entire book in Russia, if I can find it...]
Pine, Francis (1994): "Privatization in Post-Socialist Poland: Peasant Women, Work, and the Restructuring of the Public Sphere", Cambridge Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 3, p.19-40. [The article discusses two Polish localities, and compares the effect of privatization on women in the two cases.]
Rande, Kristin (1996): Overgang eller undergang - Nasjon og person i endring; Litauen etter Sovjetunionens fall, Oslo: Hovedfagsavhandling, Institutt og museum for antropologi, Universitetet i Oslo. [Master's thesis on national identity and personhood in Lithuania in the early 1990's. In Norwegian. Can be borrowed or copied from FSN. Will later be published on www.anthrobase.com.]
Sampson, Steven L. (1994): "Money Without Culture, Culture Without Money. Eastern Europe's Nouveaux Riches", Anthropological Journal on European Cultures, Vol. 3, No. 1, p.7-29. [An article about the new rich and the old intelligentsia, and the relationship between them.]
Turner, Victor (1964 [1977]): "Betwixt and Between. The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage", in: The Forest of Symbols. Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, p.93-111, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [This, and the two next, articles, show the development of Victor Turner's theory of liminality (transitional stages).]
Turner, Victor (1969 [1977]): "Liminality and Communitas", in: The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure, p.94-130, New York: Cornell University Press. [See Turner 1964.]
Turner, Victor (1974): "Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual. An Essay in Comparative Symbology", in E. Norbeck (ed.): The Anthropological Study of Human Play, p.53-90, Rice University Studies, Vol. 60. [See Turner 1964.]
Verdery, Katherine (1991): "Theorizing Socialism: A Prologue to the 'Transition'", American Anthropologist, Vol. 18, No. 3, p.419-436. [A short, compact article, where Verdery gives the classic desciption of her model of socialist-type societies.]
Verdery, Katherine (1995): "Faith, Hope, and Caritas in the Land of the Pyramids: Romania, 1990 to 1994", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37, No. 4, p.625-669. [Long article, where Verdery discusses the meaning of the pyramid-games that were common many places in East Europe in the early days of the transition. The article brings out very well many of the fundamental conflicts between the "new" and the "old" system.]