Presentations by Streams

The liberalization of the economy in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s also reconfigured social stratification. While socialist societies privileged workers, the primary focus of political interest arguably shifted towards the middle class already in the late socialist era. Membership in the middle classes became one of the central promises and aspirations of the subsequent postsocialist economic and political transformations; the working classes, on the other hand, experienced symbolic devaluation. These processes, this panel suggests, did not have only a political and economic dimension. Equally important for subjective perceptions of class positions and expectations in postsocialism is culture. Particular cultural practices became associated with performances of class identities, while representations created and continue to create role models of class-specific behaviour. This panel examines these processes in historical perspective, charting their development from the late 1980s onwards, on examples from Poland, Romania and Czech Republic and Slovakia.