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This paper sets out to describe and conceptualize the social status and role of the architectural profession in post-socialist society. The turn towards market democracy from state socialism changes the material and symbolic conditions of the architectural profession. Privatization of the building and housing sectors transforms the architectural profession from previously a profession that had a say (even if it was limited) in city development processes into an entrepreneurial profession, depending on commissions from the private sector. In the article, I argue that architects claim a certain status as public intellectuals, but fluctuate towards an autonomisation of aesthetics in architecture, claiming architecture as art and trying to establish cultural capital as a legitimating strategy of certain decisions. The central theme in public discourse on architecture – generated by architects – is a dichotomy between architecture as art versus commercialized architecture. In this discourse, the role of "architects' people" remains preempted. I argue that while claiming a status of "opposition", architects ultimately add to the establishment and solidification of the current neoliberal order.

This paper sets out to describe and conceptualize the social status and role of the architectural profession in post-socialist society. The turn towards market democracy from state socialism changes the material and symbolic conditions of the architectural profession. Privatization of the building and housing sectors transforms the architectural profession from previously a profession that had a say (even if it was limited) in city development processes into an entrepreneurial profession, depending on commissions from the private sector. In the article, I argue that architects claim a certain status as public intellectuals, but fluctuate towards an autonomisation of aesthetics in architecture, claiming architecture as art and trying to establish cultural capital as a legitimating strategy of certain decisions. The central theme in public discourse on architecture – generated by architects – is a dichotomy between architecture as art versus commercialized architecture. In this discourse, the role of "architects' people" remains preempted. I argue that while claiming a status of "opposition", architects ultimately add to the establishment and solidification of the current neoliberal order.

This paper sets out to describe and conceptualize the social status and role of the architectural profession in post-socialist society. The turn towards market democracy from state socialism changes the material and symbolic conditions of the architectural profession. Privatization of the building and housing sectors transforms the architectural profession from previously a profession that had a say (even if it was limited) in city development processes into an entrepreneurial profession, depending on commissions from the private sector. In the article, I argue that architects claim a certain status as public intellectuals, but fluctuate towards an autonomisation of aesthetics in architecture, claiming architecture as art and trying to establish cultural capital as a legitimating strategy of certain decisions. The central theme in public discourse on architecture – generated by architects – is a dichotomy between architecture as art versus commercialized architecture. In this discourse, the role of "architects' people" remains preempted. I argue that while claiming a status of "opposition", architects ultimately add to the establishment and solidification of the current neoliberal order.

This paper sets out to describe and conceptualize the social status and role of the architectural profession in post-socialist society. The turn towards market democracy from state socialism changes the material and symbolic conditions of the architectural profession. Privatization of the building and housing sectors transforms the architectural profession from previously a profession that had a say (even if it was limited) in city development processes into an entrepreneurial profession, depending on commissions from the private sector. In the article, I argue that architects claim a certain status as public intellectuals, but fluctuate towards an autonomisation of aesthetics in architecture, claiming architecture as art and trying to establish cultural capital as a legitimating strategy of certain decisions. The central theme in public discourse on architecture – generated by architects – is a dichotomy between architecture as art versus commercialized architecture. In this discourse, the role of "architects' people" remains preempted. I argue that while claiming a status of "opposition", architects ultimately add to the establishment and solidification of the current neoliberal order.

"China and Postsocialist Anthropology is a sophisticated and insightful analysis of post-socialist regimes, seen through the prism of the Chinese case. Andrew Kipnis is a highly conceptual anthropologist, very well versed in social-science theory, who also has an in-depth, on-the-ground knowledge of China. Bilingual in Chinese and English, in this important book, he employs his dual expertise to present cogent analyses of post-socialist power relations, post-Marxian social theory, neo-liberalism and neo-leftists in China, the reshaping of citizenship, and a range of other related topics. The book will be of considerable value to comparative social scientists, his fellow anthropologists, specialists in socialist and post-socialist regimes and societies, and social theorists."--Publisher's website

AbstractWhen discussing postsocialist civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), scholars have predominantly focused on the nonparticipatory and advocacy-oriented activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), effectively narrowing the concept of "civil society" to that of the "civic sector." This actor-focused and normative approach has resulted in a systematic obfuscation of less structured forms of everyday resistance, civic engagement, active citizenship, contentious politics, and social movements, giving only a partial view of civil societies in the region. Through a critical dialogue between state-of-the-art research on postsocialist civil society and the practice turn in international political sociology (IPS), this article postulates an analytical distinction between contentious and compliant practices in order to arrive at a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the ways in which postsocialist civil societies are manifested, enacted, and actualized. On the one hand, the proposed practice turn moves the research agenda away from abstract, universalist, and normative assumptions of what civil society should be in favor of an embedded, contextual, and critical understanding of what it actually is; on the other hand, this shift opens venues for theorizing not only about, but also from the "postsocialist condition" of civil societies in the transnational space of CEE.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction: "Information Pot" and Postsocialist Politics of Mediation -- 1 Extrasensory Powers, Magic Waves, and Information Explosion: Imagining the Digital -- 2 The Curious Case of a Robot Doctor: Rethinking Labor, Expert Systems, and the Interface -- 3 The "Ultrastable System" and the New Cinema -- 4 Affective Form: Advertising, Information Aesthetics, and Experimental Writing in the Market Economy -- 5 Liminal Mediation and the Cinema Redefined -- Epilogue: The Virtual Past(s) of the Future(s) -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

Socialism, understood as the rejection of markets based on
private property in favor of comprehensive centralized economic
planning, is no longer a serious political option. If the core
of capitalism is the organization of the economy primarily through
market competition based on private property, then capitalism
has certainly defeated socialism. Markets have been
accepted—and central planning abandoned—throughout
most of the Third World and in most of the formerly Communist
states. In the advanced industrial states of the West, Labor
and "democratic socialist" parties have rejected
socialism, by deregulating markets and privatizing industries,
utilities, and transport. The U.K. Labour Party's 1945
manifesto declared the party to be a "Socialist Party,
and proud of it. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of the
Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain." Today the Labour
Party insists that markets are a given.