this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
62 points (100.0% liked)
theory
584 readers
1 users here now
A community for in-depth discussion of books, posts that are better suited for !literature@www.hexbear.net will be removed.
The hexbear rules against sectarian posts or comments will be strictly enforced here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm reading "Privatizing Poland; Babyfood, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor". it's about a baby food factory in Poland and how it was "acquired" by a US baby food firm. It's about the workers in the factory, how the "Shock Doctrine" effected their lives, how they pushed back and adapted, and generally about the experience of transitioning from Socialism to Capitalism. The author is Elizabeth C. Dunn. She did participant observation, ie working in the factory and talking with folks, in 1995-1997. The book was published in 2004. There's definitely some brainworms but I haven't decided how brainwormy it is.
oh, I should specify - This is an ethnography by an anthropologist, so it uses the methods and lens of anthropological participant observation where you go live with the people you're studying and kind of let them tell the stories they think are important to their lives.
187 pages + the index
I quite liked it, though I definitely agree on the some degree of brainwormy. It really does a good job of (if unintentionally) showing how fundamentally different eastern bloc economics were from the capitalist world