From class origins to individual psychopathology: Spousal murder according to state socialist Czechoslovak criminology

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110277
Author(s):  
Kateřina Lišková ◽  
Lucia Moravanská
Keyword(s):  
Positive Influence ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
Relative State ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
State Socialist

Over the course of 40 years of state socialism, the explanation that Czechoslovak criminologists gave for spousal murder changed significantly. Initially attributing offences to the perpetrator's class origins, remnants of his bourgeois way of life, and the lack of positive influence from the collective in the long 1950s, criminologists then refocused their attention solely on the individual's psychopathology during the period known as ‘Normalization’, which encompassed the last two decades of state socialism. Based on an analysis of archival sources, including scholarly journals and expert reports, and following Ian Hacking's insight that ‘kinds of people come into being’ through the realignment of systems of knowledge, this article shows how new kinds of spousal murderer emerged as a result of shifting criminological expertise. We explain the change as the result of the psychiatrization of criminology that occurred in Czechoslovakia at a time when the regime needed to consolidate after the upheavals of the Prague Spring of 1968. The criminological framing of spousal murder as belonging squarely in the individualized realm of the private sphere reflected the contemporaneous effort of the regime to enclose the private as a sphere of relative state non-interference.

Goods and States: The Political Logic of State-Socialist Material Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The City ◽  
State Socialist

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).

From state socialism to capitalism: The role of class and the world system

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lane
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Transition To Capitalism ◽  
State Socialist

While theories of global capitalism have added a new dimension to our understanding of the dynamics of the modern world, a ‘globalisation’ approach to the transformation of the state socialist societies is relatively underdeveloped. This paper studies the role of international and global factors under state socialism and the world system in the pre-1989 period. The paper considers traditional Marxist approaches to the transition to capitalism and criticises the model of state capitalism as well as the world system approach. In contrast, social actors (the ‘acquisition’ and ‘administrative’ social strata and the global political elite)are identified as playing a major role in the fall of state socialism, and were a nascent capitalist class. The transformation of state socialism, it is contended, had the character of a revolution rather than a shift between different types of capitalism.

Toward Socialism with a Human Face?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balázs Trencsényi ◽  
Michal Kopeček ◽  
Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič ◽  
Maria Falina ◽  
Mónika Baár ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Political Language ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Face ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
State Socialist

Marxist revisionism, providing a powerful political language of intra-systemic opposition, was characterized by an effort to restore the relative autonomy of the personality in the face of both society and history, to provide new ethics, a new way of life, and envision “socialism with a human face.” The 1960s witnessed an unprecedented boom of Marxist and non-Marxist intellectual and cultural production, ranging from the rediscovery of the inconvenient past to critical analyses of existing socialist societies and an artistic blossoming reconnecting East Central Europe to broader European intellectual and aesthetic currents. Another venue of dialogue was between unorthodox Marxists and religious thinkers struggling to find their way in secular state socialist regimes. The climax and eventually also the anti-climax of this revival was 1968, with the rise of reform communist movements, linking technocratic and democratic reformism with revolutionary radicalism coming mainly from the student movements.

State-socialist Transformations in the Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 258-269
Author(s):  
Dieter Segert
Keyword(s):  
State Socialism ◽  
East Europe ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Classical State ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Type ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
State Socialist

This chapter examines European state socialism, which emerged in the Russian Revolution of 1917. It has two roots, the social democratic labour movement and specific problems of underdeveloped, peripheral capitalist societies. While generally relying on Marx, the Bolsheviks invented the doctrine of the ‘new type of party’. After the conquest and stabilization of power, they built in Russia the institutions of classical state socialism and led the country on a specific path of modernization. After 1945, there was a second wave of state-socialist transformation in eight states of East Central and South East Europe. In all countries except Yugoslavia, the formal institutions of the Soviet model were established but the informal practices between countries differed considerably. At the end of the chapter, the blind spots and desiderata of three scholarly interpretations of state socialism are discussed.

The mediating effect of mood on in-store behaviour among Muslim shoppers

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syuhaily Osman ◽  
Fon Sim Ong ◽  
Md Nor Othman ◽  
Kok Wei Khong
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Shopping Behaviour ◽  
Country Specific ◽  
Two Age Groups

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of atmospherics on in-store behaviour among Malay Muslim shoppers in Malaysia. The effect of age on shopping behaviour is tested using two age groups: 18-25 years and 50 years or older. Design/methodology/approach – Quantitative methodology was employed, using structural equation modelling for testing the hypotheses developed. Purposive sampling was applied. Findings – Results of the present study show that positive perceptions of atmospherics exerted a positive influence on mood, which, in turn, affected in-store behaviour. Based on stimulus–organism–response theory, Muslim shoppers who were positive about the atmospherics tend to spend more time and money, and they exhibited intention to patronize the store again. Originality/value – Although past studies suggest that Muslim consumers are different due to their Islamic way of life, guided by the Islamic principles, by controlling for country-specific influences such as socio-economic factors, the results of this study provide support that modern marketing concepts are as relevant for the Muslim market as they are relevant for other market segments. Using the Mehrabian–Russell framework, Malay Muslims are found to be influenced by store atmospherics which, in turn, affect their in-store shopping behaviour. When comparing younger and older Muslims, results show no evidence of significant differences between these two age groups.

scholarly journals By Force of Power

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (S1) ◽  
pp. 30-51
Author(s):  
György Péteri
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
Client Relations ◽  
State Socialist

Patron-client relations were a ubiquitous feature of cultural and academic life under the state socialist social order, as were networks crisscrossing the borderlines between the domains of political power and scholarship. Awareness of and due attention to such relations and networks, this article argues, is a sine qua non of any reliable history of economics in the communist era. Pioneering projects, publications presenting innovative new approaches, individual careers yielding significant works of domestic and international acclaim were as much dependent on the support and protection of the politically powerful as on genuine talent and diligence. State socialism was not the kind of social order that would typically enable a spectacular scholarly development just “by force of thought.” The article focuses on the story of one particularly important patron in Hungary over the field of economics, a true communist grand seigneur: István Friss. It shows how his contribution has been systematically neglected, suppressed by both the historical and the memoir literature, and it presents archival evidence highlighting the vital importance of Friss’s patronage for the work and careers of such leading economists as András Bródy and, particularly, János Kornai.

scholarly journals The “Economic Battle” Now and Then: (E)valuation Patterns of Distributive Justice in Cuban State-Socialism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Jany
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Allocation Rules ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
State Socialist

AbstractThis article disentangles and explores some commonly made assumptions about egalitarian state-socialist ideologies. Based on the conceptual framework of the multiprinciple approach of justice, it presents the results of an in-depth analysis of (e)valuation patterns of distributive justice in Cuban state-socialism. The analysis mainly focuses on ideational conceptions of distributive justice (just rewards), but it also accounts for distribution outcomes and resulting (in)equalities (actual rewards). The results of the comparative case study of the Cuban framework of institutions and political leaders’ views in two periods of time, the early 1960s and the 2010s, point to (e)valuation patterns that are generally labelled as egalitarian, such as the allocation rules of outcome equality and (non-functional) needs. However, contrary to common assumptions about egalitarian state-socialist ideologies, the results also point to several other patterns, including equity rules as well as functional and productivist allocation rules. I argue that many of these (e)valuation patterns, in their connection to the discursive storyline of the Cuban economic battle, are indeed compatible with egalitarian state-socialist ideology.

The State of Socialism: A Note on Terminology

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
State Socialist

Scholars use a variety of terms to refer to the regimes of the former Soviet bloc. Some prefer communist, while others use socialist or state socialist. In this article, Andrew Roberts argues that communism is the better choice. Using socialism or state socialism to refer to these regimes stretches the concept unnecessarily, making one label refer to two regimes with little in common. This conceptual stretching has two negative consequences. First, it impedes efficient scholarly communication. Second, it impoverishes political debate by diminishing the achievements of democratic socialists. A solution to this problem is to use the term communist to refer to Soviet-style regimes.

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