Date: 2019
Type: Contribution to book
Inventing the socialist consumer : worker, citizen or customer? Politics of mass consumption in Bulgaria, 1954-1960
Krzysztof BRZECHCZYN (ed.), New perspectives in transnational history of communism in East Central Europe, Berlin : Peter Lang, 2019, pp.171-198
STANOEVA, Elitza, Inventing the socialist consumer : worker, citizen or customer? Politics of mass consumption in Bulgaria, 1954-1960, in Krzysztof BRZECHCZYN (ed.), New perspectives in transnational history of communism in East Central Europe, Berlin : Peter Lang, 2019, pp.171-198
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65930
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This chapter discusses socialist consumerism from the perspective of the contradictory institutional agendas that stimulated its development after de-Stalinization. On the level of party and state decrees, the advancement of mass consumption attempted to prove the regime’s responsiveness to workers’ needs as well as the economical supremacy of socialism. On this plane, the socialist consumer was envisaged in proletarian terms. On the level of popular propaganda, the party imagery was supplemented by a notion of the consumer as an exemplary socialist citizen. Steering consumer choices through soft techniques of social discipline, popular magazines emphasized the educational impact of shopping in cultivating the cultural values constitutive of the “New Man.” Whereas the above two images of the consumer were mutually reinforcing, in the operational logic of high-ranking commercial enterprises – the flagships of socialist trade – they were eclipsed by the figure of the customer stripped of any ideological qualifications. Concerned with their economic performance, these state-run enterprises employed marketing strategies with a discernible client-oriented approach. The outcome of meshing political propaganda, social engineering, and economic objectives gave birth to a hybrid notion of socialist consumers: enticed to increase their consumption, yet paternalistically navigated in their consumer choices; agitated with promises of social equality and mass prosperity, yet lured to lifestyle individualization.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65930
Full-text via DOI: 10.3726/b15245
ISBN: 9783631780992
Publisher: Peter Lang
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