Reconceptualizing the Social: East Central Europe and the New Sociocultural History

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantin Iordachi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Future Research ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe

This introductory essay reviews recent debates on social history, with a focus on the revival of this field of studies in post-communist East Central Europe and its potential impact on rejuvenating approaches to the social history of Europe. The first part of the essay provides a brief overview of the emergence of social history as a reaction to the dominant political history of the nineteenth century and its crystallization in different national schools, and highlights recent responses to the poststructuralist and postmodern critiques of “the social.” The second part focuses on traditions of social history research in East Central Europe, taking Poland and Romania as main examples. The third part summarizes the main claims of the articles included in this issue and evaluates their implications for future research. It is argued that, at first glance, post-communist historiography in East Central Europe provides the picture of a discipline in transformation, still struggling to break up with the past and to rebuild its institutional framework, catching up with recent trends and redefining its role in continental and global historiography. The recent attempts to invigorate research in traditional fields of social history might seem largely obsolete, not only out of tune with international developments but also futile reiterations of vistas that have been for long experimented with and superseded in Western Europe. At closer scrutiny, however, historiography in East Central Europe appears—unequal and variegated as it is—as a laboratory for historical innovation and a field of experimentation, and interaction of scholars from various disciplines and scholarly traditions, in which old and new trends amalgamate in peculiar ways. It is suggested that the tendency to reconceptualize the “social” that we currently witness in humanities and social sciences worldwide could be not only reinforced but also cross-fertilized by the “social turn” in East Central Europe, potentially leading to novel approaches.

The Joy of Everyday Life: Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life in the Socialist Dictatorships

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 185-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Apor
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
Life Styles ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Generation

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.

scholarly journals Jagellonian Ledgers as Sources for Watermark Research and Paper History Studies: The First Papermills of East-Central Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 324-340
Author(s):  
Krisztina Rábai
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Paper Mills ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Paper Making ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Different Parts

This study is based on the analysis of the paper and the text of royal and princely accounts in which scribes registered the everyday incomes and expenditures of four Jagiellonian courts, located in different parts of East-Central Europe around the turn of the 15th and 16th-century. The period covers the establishment and the very first years of paper mills in Silesia and the Polish Kingdom. Regarding the lack of archival sources preserving the foundation and running of these mills, the cradles of paper-making in East-Central Europe, one should use many different and quite laconic written sources to shed light upon these revolutionary years. Although accounts could preserve mentions of purchasing, trading and using paper, in most cases the textual information is not adequate to reconstruct a detailed and clear image of paper producing; researchers should examine the medium of writing - the paper - itself. Instead of the investigation of single sheets, folded papers, small notebooks and bound books such as accounts proved to be more useful. One can compare the sheets of the volumes and find those traces which lead to the paper mills, the places of their origin. Through the detailed examination of one especially complex and interesting ledger from the courts of Prince Sigismund, the author attempts to demonstrate the opportunities lay in watermark studies. Furthermore, the article purposes to reflect on the huge hiatus clearly perceptible on the field of watermark research and paper history in East-Central Europe and the necessity of developing a database of watermarks reflecting on the history of paper-making in this region. 

The Conditions in Jewish Society in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Middle Decades of the Eighteenth Century

1996 ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
East European ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.

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