Suchergebnisse

Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-communism can be understood as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy (as well as the older political traditions), and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular

"The book intends to be the first collective monograph of the post-1989 history of political and social thought of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The project emerges from a deep conviction that the period of political transitions in the region, whether accomplished, aborted or abhorred, can and needs to be treated as a chapter in the intellectual history of political thought. Adopting the perspective of intellectual history, but inviting multidisciplinary expertise, the book aims to contribute to a more complex reflection on the post-socialist 'transition period' in East Central Europe and its historicization. While necessarily lacking comprehensiveness, it has a remarkable exploratory value for the future challenges in the field. The volume raises some of the most pressing problems of intellectual history of the period as addressed by the current scholarship, clustered into several major themes"--Provided by publisher