David A. Kideckel

Miners and Wives in Romania's Jiu Valley: Perspectives on Postsocialist Class, Gender, and Social Change

Theories of postsocialism posit great variability, uncertainty, and change in developing gender relationships. This article, using the case of Romanias Jiu Valley coal miners, suggests that gender change in postsocialism is somewhat more predictable than assumed as it is most typically dependent on changing class hierarchies and conditions. Due to large-scale economic restructuring in Romanias Jiu Valley coal-mining region and the denigration of the once-celebrated worker, gender relations between miners and their wives, highly differentiated, dependent, but distanced during socialism, have become much more closely intertwined, to mixed effect. In some instances, these relations disintegrate, leaving extreme social problems in their wake. In other instances spouses switch roles to enable income-producing activity but cause gender uncertainty and problematic behavior. Whatever the response, these changes both result from changing labor and class conditions and produce identity crises for both Valley men and women and, by implication, for other postsocialist workers.

The best laid plans …: Class and nation in socialist society and culture

Nagengast, Carole. Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture, and the Polish State. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1991. xvi + 239 pp. including appendices and references.

Neighbors at war : anthropological perspectives on Yugoslav ethnicity, culture, and history

45.00 cloth. Verdery, Katherine. National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescus Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. xvi + 406 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index.

the socialist transformation of agriculture in a Romanian commune, 1945‐62

39.95 cloth.