Anthropological Approaches to Understanding the Socialism

Socialism as an ideology and as a basis for social arrangement of certain number of countries in the world has been in the focus of the research community since the time of their creation. Socialism has been analyzed by researchers from countries that belonged to this block, but even more in the focus of interest of “Western” authors.
However, the main interest related to socialism as ideology and basis of social, political, economic and cultural arrangement rose after its fall and the changes that took place in the countries of the so called “Eastern bloc”, or according to the new post-socialist nomenclature, “the countries of the Eastern-European block”, that started after the collapse of USSSR, at the beginning of the 1990ties. Thus, from today’s point of view, it can be said that the main critical anthropological analysis of socialist and communist societies of the South-East European countries were made after the fall of this system, and after the advance of democratization of these societies and their opening towards the “West”. First anthropological studies that deal with individual cases of socialist states (USSR, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia) were made at the begging of the 1990-ties, as separate case studies aiming to analyze the similarities and the specific elements of socialistic societies in each of these countries.

Course leader

Prof. d-r Ljupco S. Risteski, Skopje (Macedonia) Prof. d-r Margarita Karamihova, Sofia (Bulgaria)

Target group

Students and other interested parties should obtain knowledge and practical research and applicative skills in order to better understand the socialist system, as well as contemporary social and political systems.

Course aim

The course aims are to offer the participants detailed data and analysis of the most important features and specificities of socialist system and communist ideology and their reflections upon every-day life of people. We will research the dynamics of the formation of personal and collective memories of the socialistic past and their influence upon the contemporary notion of cultural heritage and identity. Also, the aim is to undertake comparative analysis or at least offer case studies that could reveal the main similarities and differences in the