The Social Lives of Postsocialism

Abstract

This special issue is the product of multiple trans-Atlantic collaborations. Fabio Mattioli and Caterina Borelli, guest editors of the issue and authors of this introduction, entered into dialogue to present a joint proposal for the 2012 Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). Describing postsocialism as a generative set of processes, the panel proposed to analyze multiple and creative social relations that had emerged during the transition. We asked: How do people reconfigure the socialist past as a strategy for the present? Which kinds of sociality, solidarity, and dissent emerge out of the collapse of socialism and following the introduction of neoliberal reforms? By analyzing the uncertainty of transitional moments, the panel aimed at expanding the theoretical breadth of the postsocialist paradigm so as to include the experiences and analysis of and about the new “first postsocialist generations.”