The End of Sovietoloy and the Renaissance of Modernization Theory

Burawoy, Michael; Connor, Walter D.; Jones, Anthony; Moskoff, William; Kotkin, Stephen

doi:10.2307/2075622

Cited by 59 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…The discussion Therborn, 2003, p. 303 andTilly, 1984. centers initially on the assumptions of a converging societal development and the perspective of universalizing comparison. After the collapse of the communist systems at the end of the 1980s, modernization theories experienced a revival and urban Western Europe-style was contrasted with the image of post-socialist catch-up development, based on the thesis that sociospatial differentiation of post-socialist cities was following the same convergent pattern as cities in the West (Burawoy, 1994;Hamilton et al, 2005). Statements such as "post-socialist cities are acquiring "standard" capitalist features (Sýkora, 1994) and "returning" to capitalist form (Häussermann, 1996;Hirt, 2006, p. 466) or "the postsocialist residential suburbanisation is rather a steady rehabilitation of natural urban development" (Our �edníc �ek, 2005, p. 154) reveal that capitalist cities in Western societies are often implicitly represented as the "norm" toward which other cities are evolving (Bodnár, 2001, p. 9).…”

Section: Convergence Assumptions Urban Prototypes and The Supposed mentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Debates in Post-Socialist Urban Studies

Wiest

2012

Urban Geography

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Recent urban research on post-socialist cities includes a wide range of empirical studies dealing with processes of sociospatial change since 1990. Despite this accumulated knowledge, studies that explicitly question the underlying comparative assumptions involving post-socialist cities are rare. Against that backdrop, this study seeks to contribute to a selfreflective debate on understanding post-socialist cities vis-à-vis wider debates on comparative methods in urban studies. The starting point is the new interest in comparisons as a way to stimulate critical thinking in urban research in the wake of postcolonial studies. The main intention is to transfer some parts of this debate to the context of post-socialist urban studies, and to raise awareness of the often implicit comparative assumptions that underpin such research. Drawing on an extensive comparative study of sociospatial differentiation in Budapest, Vilnius, Sofia, Leipzig, and St. Petersburg, this article focuses on the challenge of explaining the diversity of post-socialist urban forms in relation to an increasingly interconnected globalized world. The argument here is for the need to widen the research agenda on post-socialist cities in order to raise consciousness for implicit comparisons with Western experiences, to address the global interconnectedness of the urban experience, and to call the reification of the post-socialist city as the basic entity for comparison into question. [Key words: comparative urbanism, post-socialist urban development, entangled modernities, socio-spatial differentiation.]

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Section: Convergence Assumptions Urban Prototypes and The Supposed mentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Debates in Post-Socialist Urban Studies

Wiest

2012

Urban Geography

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“…They make possible the rupture, the denunciation, and the order" (p. 79). 106 Burawoy (1992) predicted that "[b]y digging an ever-wider chasm between ideology and reality, between promise and actuality, capitalism will once more fertilize the socialist imagination" (p. 785). 107 In 1984, with the end of the CESES international conferences, CESES participants formed the Italian Association for the Study of Comparative Economic Systems (AISSEC).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…27 Mieli repeatedly declared that he was inspired 24 As Oushakine (2001) has shown, dissidents' oppositional discourse was not separate from the official discourse, but rather mimicked this discourse. Similarly, Burawoy (1992) writes, "Rather than endorsing alternative values, the working class embraced the regime's values as its own, which became a basis for opposition to the regime's actual practice" (p. 777). 26 Mieli (1996) remembered that it was difficult for him and many other former "communists by profession" to find work after leaving the PCI because many did not trust ex-communists and the "anti-communists" felt satisfied by the PCI crisis without doing anything to help the ex-communists (pp.…”

Section: Liminal Spaces Liminal Peoplementioning

confidence: 99%

The origins of neoliberalism between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism: “A galaxy without borders”

Bockman

2007

Theor Soc

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Scholars have argued that transnational networks of right-wing economists and activists caused the worldwide embrace of neoliberalism. Using the case of an Italian think tank, CESES, associated with these networks, the author shows that the origins of neoliberalism were not in hegemony but in liminality. At CESES, the Italian and American right sought to convert Italians to free market values by showing them how Soviet socialism worked. However, CESES was created in liminal spaces that opened up within and between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Scholars from East and West at CESES developed new knowledge about actually existing socialism, which, due to the shifting context of the Cold War, seemed to provoke left-wing sympathies among the scholars and the students involved. CESES in fact required left-wing scholars, who had necessary skills and a fascination with a common project of democratic or market socialism, to create this new knowledge. The new knowledge that developed out of an East-West dialogue not only helped right-wing transnational networks to reorient their hegemonic projects, but also helped those on the left to understand actually existing socialism and what socialism might become. This knowledge could not be obtained without this dialogue and had to travel through liminal spaces.Scholars have argued that transnational networks of right-wing economists and activists caused the worldwide embrace of neoliberalism -policies that seek to establish strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. According to such accounts, economists and activists spread neoliberal ideas through a strategic network of right-wing think tanks, associations like the Mont Pelerin Society, foundations like that of the Scaife family, and economics departments at the University of Chicago and elsewhere (Bourdieu and

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“…Crucially, the dependence of Sovietology on the continued relevance of its object of study culminated in a situation in which Sovietologists 'could never imagine a world without the Soviet Union, a world without themselves'. 67 Similarly, in order to understand the dynamics of European crisis and the forces of disintegration, Europeanists would have to imagine the demise of their own academic identity. A world without the European Union, after all, might not require the field of European integration studies, apart from a few historians perhaps.…”

Section: European Integration Studies As Area Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

European Integration Studies and the European Union’s Eastern Gaze

Klinke

2014

Millennium

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European integration studies has recently seen the first signs of a belated critical turn. While new approaches have started to challenge the way the European Union is conventionally studied, they are yet to investigate in detail the relationship between the academic field and its primary object of study. This article draws on work in critical geopolitics to explore one of the interfaces of academic knowledge on European integration and the world of policy: the Jean Monnet Programme. In highlighting the scheme's role in the EU's Eastern geopolitics, it argues that European integration studies resembles other forms of area studies, such as cold war era Sovietology. This comparison elucidates both the field's long-standing resilience to critical theory and its inability to anticipate the recent crisis of the European project.

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The End of Sovietoloy and the Renaissance of Modernization Theory

Cited by 59 publications

References 0 publications

Comparative Debates in Post-Socialist Urban Studies

Comparative Debates in Post-Socialist Urban Studies

The origins of neoliberalism between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism: “A galaxy without borders”

European Integration Studies and the European Union’s Eastern Gaze

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