Material Fantasies : Expectations of the Western Consumer World among East Germans /

"This study of East German fantasies of material abundance across the border, both before and after the fall of communism, shows the close and intricate relation between ideology and fantasy in upholding social life. In 1989, news broadcasts all over the world were dominated for weeks by images...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Veenis, Milena
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2012.
Series:Book collections on Project MUSE.
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Table of Contents:
  • Fieldwork
  • Reactions to my presence
  • Material culture and tell-tale one-liners
  • Generalization, differentiation
  • Germany 1945: a country in ruins
  • material and social trauma
  • In search of a hold
  • The GDR: future promises
  • The past rewritten
  • A new future: material well-being
  • Material realizations
  • Severe, rational and centrally planned
  • "Far too modern for our people," and economic gaps
  • Queuing and mutual equality
  • The east German dictatorship
  • Theorizing dictatorship
  • Local conversations on dictatorship
  • Irony, a caring state, and the Nische
  • Silenced pasts
  • Different perspectives and jokes about the stasi
  • The stasi's methods and the taboo on more
  • Egalitarianism, crab antics, and adjustment
  • Western promise
  • Irresistible prosperity
  • East Germans' identification with the west
  • The material as fulfillment
  • Shattered illusions
  • The wende
  • East Germans' dissatisfaction
  • Three reasons for east German despondency
  • Conclusion.