Deserved

Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain

Till Hilmar

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Hardback

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English

Columbia University Press
04 July 2023

History of other lands; Sociology; Economic history

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were completely disrupted, and the meanings attached to work were drastically altered. How did people who found themselves living under state socialism one day and capitalist democracy the next adjust to the changing social order and its new system of values?

Till Hilmar examines memories of the postsocialist transition in East Germany and the Czech Republic to offer new insights into the power of narratives about economic change. Despite the structural nature of economic shifts, people often interpret life outcomes in individual terms. Many are deeply attached to the belief that success and failure must be deserved. Emphasizing individual effort, responsibility, and character, they pass moral judgments based on a person's fortunes in the job market. Hilmar argues that such frameworks represent ways of making sense of the profound economic and social dislocations after 1989. People craft narratives of deservingness about themselves and others to solve the problem of belonging in a new social order.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with engineers and care workers as well as historical and comparative analysis of the breakdown of communism in Eastern Europe, Deserved sheds new light on the moral imagination of capitalism and the experience of economic change. This book also offers crucial perspective on present-day politics, showing how notions of deservingness and moral worth have propelled right-wing populism.

By: Till Hilmar
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780231209786
ISBN 10: 0231209789
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 04 July 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Till Hilmar is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna and a faculty fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology.

Reviews for Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain

Deserved is the first attempt to propose a full-fledged theory of perception of economic justice in the field of memory studies. The evidence Hilmar has collected from East-Central Europe is interesting, and the book will resonate with the growing interest in economic aspects of social memory. His concept of 'moral deservingness' will become a useful tool for studying perception of other instances of economic changes. -- Joanna Wawrzyniak, author of <i>Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives</i>