Escape from arbitrariness : Legitimation crisis of real socialism and the imaginary of modernity

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F21%3A00120599" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/21:00120599 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368431020908587" target="_blank" >https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368431020908587</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1368431020908587" target="_blank" >10.1177/1368431020908587</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Escape from arbitrariness : Legitimation crisis of real socialism and the imaginary of modernity

Original language description

The 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent transitions have commonly been interpreted in political terms, as movements towards democracy, or in economic terms, as escape from the command economy towards the free market. We revisit the problem to suggest a different reading. We argue that in the legitimization crisis of real socialism, a pivotal role was played by the burden of social oversaturation and bureaucratic arbitrariness, which met its desired alternative in social imaginaries of impersonal, objective social system. For the citizens of Central and East European countries, this fantasy was matched by the promise of the free market, which was morally contrasted to the experience of daily life under late socialism. We argue that this desire to escape from arbitrariness to objectivity is a particularly strong motive in the imaginary of modernity which found one of its historical manifestations in the disappointment with real socialism.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

European Journal of Social Theory

ISSN

1368-4310

e-ISSN

1461-7137

Volume of the periodical

24

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

20

Pages from-to

140-159

UT code for WoS article

000518407800001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85081631893