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Teaching about postcommunism

Stoyanova, Veronika (2023) Teaching about postcommunism. In: Outhwaite, William, ed. Teaching Political Sociology. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 125-148. (doi:10.4337/9781802205152.00013) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:105757)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided. (Contact us about this Publication)
Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802205152.00013

Abstract

This chapter discusses postcommunism as a global and yet-unexhausted resource of value for teaching critical political sociology in Western higher education. Based on a dozen conversations with educators in British universities, the author's own reflections on her teaching experience, and a review of recent debates over the value, parameters and preoccupations of the field, it considers some more technical and institutional challenges, as well as some more general and political barriers to incorporating knowledge and histories from the former East into broader (political) sociology curricula. A relative lack of student friendly reading material and a decreasing pool of area expertise for example, coupled with a recently renewed interest in Russia and Eastern Europe through the lens of conflict and security, poses significant challenges for critical education aimed at overcoming Cold War-era fallacies. At the same time, the intensive research accumulated by anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, and politics scholars over the past three decades of easier access to the region of the former East and local as well as emigre scholarship, makes today for an invaluable collection of (growing) critical insight which has, particularly in the past decade, been unearthing previously erased histories and knowledges of significant critical value today. Much of this work draws on a more or less explicit post- and de-colonial analysis to de-centre and rethink previously dominant monolithic frames and entrenched binarisms - an exercise, this chapter argues, of immense value for todays' Western lecture hall and seminar room.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.4337/9781802205152.00013
Uncontrolled keywords: postcommunism; postsocialism; teaching; higher education; political sociology; erased histories
Subjects: H Social Sciences
H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
J Political Science
L Education
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Depositing User: Veronika Stoyanova
Date Deposited: 25 Apr 2024 08:41 UTC
Last Modified: 26 Apr 2024 08:38 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/105757 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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