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Material fantasies : expectations of the Western consumer world among the East Germans / Milena Veenis.
Lippincott Library HC290.795.C6 V44 2012
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Veenis, Milena.
- Series:
- Technology and European history series ; 6.
- Technology and European history series ; 6
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Post-communism--Germany (East).
- Post-communism.
- Consumption (Economics)--Germany (East).
- Consumption (Economics).
- Quality of life.
- Germany (East).
- Quality of life--Germany (West).
- Germany (West).
- Quality of life--Germany (East).
- Germany (East)--Relations--Germany (West).
- Relations.
- Germany (West)--Relations--Germany (East).
- Germany--History--Unification, 1990.
- Germany.
- History.
- Germany--Social conditions--1990-.
- Social conditions.
- Physical Description:
- 280 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2012.
- Summary:
- This informative study of East German fantasies of material abundance across the border, both before and after the fall of communism, shows the close and intricate relationship between ideology and fantasy in upholding social life. In 1989, news broadcasts all over the world were dominated for weeks by images of East Germans crossing the Berlin Wall to West Germany. The images, representing the fall of communism and the democratic will of the people, also showed the East Germans' excitements at finally being able to enter the Western consumer paradise. But what exactly had they expected to find on the other side of the Wall? Why did they shed tears of joy when for the first time in their lives, they stepped inside West German shops? And why were they prepared to pay more than 10 per cent of their average monthly wage for a pineapple?
- Drawing on fifteen months of research in the fast-changing post-communist East Germany, Veenis unravels the perennial truths about the interrelationships of fantasies of material wealth, personal fulfillment and social cohesion. She argues persuasively that the far-fetched socialist and capitalist promises of consumption as the road to the ultimate well-being, the partial realization and partial corruption thereof, the implicit social and psychological interests underlying the politicized promises in both countries form the breeding ground for the development of materialist, cargo-cult-like fantasies, in which material well-being came to be seen as the place of "fulfillment and ultimate arrival". Book jacket.
- Contents:
- 1 Fieldwork 31
- Reactions to My Presence 32
- Material Culture and Tell-Tale One-Liners 37
- Generalization, Differentiation 43
- 2 Germany 1945: A Country in Ruins 47
- Material and Social Trauma 47
- In Search of a Hold 56
- 3 The GDR: Future Promises 63
- The Past Rewritten 64
- A New Future: Material Well-Being 70
- 4 Material Realizations 75
- Severe, Rational, and Centrally Planned 75
- "Far Too Modern for our People," and Economic Gaps 86
- Queuing and Mutual Equality 97
- 5 The East German Dictatorship 107
- Theorizing Dictatorship 109
- Local Conversations on Dictatorship 117
- Irony, a Caring State, and the Nische 124
- 6 Silenced Pasts 135
- Different Perspectives and Jokes about the Stasi 137
- The Stasi's Methods and the Taboo on More 144
- Egalitarianism, Crab Antics, and Adjustment 154
- 7 Western Promise 161
- Irresistible Prosperity 162
- East Germans' Identification with the West 172
- The Material as Fulfillment 178
- 8 Shattered Illusions 183
- The Wende 184
- East Germans' Dissatisfaction 193
- Three Reasons for East German Despondency 198.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-275) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9789089644008
- 9089644008
- OCLC:
- 794135723
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