Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary

Material culture in Eastern Europe under state socialism is remembered as uniformly gray, shabby, and monotonous--the worst of postwar modernist architecture and design. Politics in Color and Concrete revisits this history by exploring domestic space in Hungary from the 1950s through the 1990s and reconstructs the multi-textured and politicized aesthetics of daily life through the objects, spaces, and colors that made up this lived environment. Krisztina F herv ry shows that contemporary standards of living and ideas about normalcy have roots in late socialist consumer culture and are not merely products of postsocialist transitions or neoliberalism. This engaging study decenters conventional perspectives on consumer capitalism, home ownership, and citizenship in the new Europe.

Author: Krisztina Fehérváry
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 09/16/2013
Pages: 312
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780253009944

About the Author

Krisztina Fehérváry is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.