Reconsidering Postsocialism from the Margins of Europe: Hope, Time and Normalcy in Post-Yugoslav Societies

Zombie socialism and the rise of neoliberalism in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe

“…Further use of concepts that evoke "incompleteness" and "catching up" are likely to mask additional transfers of economic burden on employees, households, and lower classes. Despite difficulties in positioning these countries in area studies taxonomy (Gilbert et al 2008), it might be more emancipatory for the populations of these countries to accept them as "fully transitioned" and thus be in a better position to resist the fallacies of zombie socialism.…”

Internationalism, temporality and hope: a view from Eastern Europe and the Left

“…Or a German tendency to mark East Germany as 'Stasi Land' or Unrechtsstaat (literally, a state of wrong): that is, as a state that lacks the rule of law, and one that not only systematically perpetuates injustice but was also founded on injustice. 12 As Gilbert et al (2008) point out, not only the cataclysmic 1990s but also the financial crisis of 2008 has marked an additional caesura in the decline of socialism as a future-oriented temporality.…”

Transformations of gender, sexuality and citizenship in Southeast Europe: New lenses for new, and not so new, times

“…Bonfiglioli's contribution to this special issue particularly helps to correct this omission by starting with women workers under socialism in a feminized industry and tracing the trajectories of the workers and the factories through the end of the socialist system, the Yugoslav state, and the years of war and market reforms. This approach breaks down the usual periodizations (socialism/postsocialism) that, first of all, are not so clear-cut or simultaneous across the Yugoslav successor states, and, secondly, tend to obscure the continuities and gradual changes that real people feel in their everyday lives (see Gilbert et al, 2008). Bonfiglioli's examination of the category of "worker," like Berdak's focus on that of the "veteran," further shifts our points of focus to categories that encompass both modes of state configurations and profoundly personal, and highly gendered, experiences.…”

“…This has been true of scholarship in general, as well as political discourse in the region itself (see e.g. Gilbert, 2006;Gilbert, Greenberg, Helms, & Jansen, 2008;Jansen, 2006). These essays join a new wave of fresh research that has begun to shift the focus away from nationalism and war (e.g.…”