The Joy of Everyday Life
Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life in the Socialist Dictatorships
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6186182 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Péter Apor (0000-0001-8476-9041, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 34-35 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 185-218 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | East Central Europe (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0094-3037 • E-ISSN: 1876-3308 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/18763308-0340350102009 |
| OpenAlex | W2942475562 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
In the last two decades, historians have faced difficult methodological challenges in exploring former party archives in East Central Europe and in reconstructing the political history of communist regimes. A remarkable answer to this challenge has been provided by a new generation of historians who turned their attention to the social history of socialist dictatorships in East Central Europe, and took a peculiar interest in the “small,” the “mundane” and the “insignificant” of everyday life under communism. Their laborious research has focused not on high politics, but on local communities. Their works deconstructed the life-styles, living conditions, fashion and dressing, leisure, tourism and consumption, sexual habits and childcare of ordinary people. The current study provides a historiographic overview of the major thematic and methodological orientations of the history of the everyday life in socialist dictatorships. It focuses on two distinct but overlapping directions of research: the analysis of the daily habitual organization of communist societies; and the communist authorities’ attempt at a micro-politics of everyday life. The study argues that, while the new social history of the socialist dictatorships has greatly added to our understanding of significant aspects of the social and political structure of these countries, it has also constructed a representation of everyday life as essentially impertinent to power. In doing so, it ignored the capacity of habitual social and cultural behavior in producing techniques of control and discipline
Aesthetics · Art · Communism · Dictatorship · Everyday life · Literature · Narrative · Political history · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law
| Citations per year | 0.43 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2025 (14) |
| Highly cited | No |