Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Late Antiquity
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- Postscript: Conversations on Politics and Political Science
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Syriac Studies
- The Chair: In The Room at the Fed
- New Books with Miranda Melcher
Nov 10, 2020
Ambiguous Transitions
Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania
Summary
In this episode, we meet Dr. Jill Massino, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina Charlotte who is fascinated with researching everyday life under dictatorships. We discuss Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania (Berghahn, 2019). This book, which is based on more than one hundred oral histories and extensive work in libraries and archives, shows convincingly that people and societies are complex and elude clear-cut generalizations. The author looks through the prism of everyday life, following the cycle of growing up, marriage, parenthood, while also discussing the material circumstances that structures one’s life: accessibility of consumer goods and the efforts that go into procuring them when they are scarce. “For me the important thing about everyday life history is that it provides a fuller portrait of the politics, of the economic system, of the society you are focusing on, and it allows us to see how people were both affected by and responded to state policies,” Massino explains. People did suffer under the East European socialist regimes, the author says, and not only in prison and labour camps, but also in juggling careers and family responsibilities, witnessing the gulf between the state’s delusional propaganda and reality, and in queuing for hours in the cold or trying to find infant formula through connections. On the other hand, Massino shows that this was also a time of meaningful experiences – some people escaped poverty and followed their talents, pursued fulfilling careers, and spent their family vacations on the Black Sea.
Marina Kadriu is an international MA student in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.
