Participants

Jannis Panagiotidis³; Rosamund Johnston⁵; Anna Calori¹; Besnik Pula⁶; Tobias Rupprecht²; Rory Archer⁴;  ¹ University of Glasgow, UK;  ² Freie Universität Berlin, Germany;  ³ Research Center for the History of Transformations, Austria;  ⁴ University of Ljubljana, Slovenia;  ⁵ Research Center for the History of Transformations, UNiversity of Vienna, Austria;  ⁶ Virginia Tech, United States

Discussion

This panel will discuss the recently published Routledge Handbook "1989 and the Great Transformation". 

This collection of essays analyses the pivotal year of 1989 and the transformation processes that resulted from a historical perspective. It takes the events of that momentous year as a pivot to explore longer-term processes of economic, social, political, and cultural transformation linked to the rise of neoliberalism and globalization since the 1970s and enduring until now.

Referencing the work of Karl Polanyi, the handbook advances four main arguments: that the “great transformation” presented here started earlier than 1989; that its legacies linger in spaces, practices and objects; that in order to grasp the scale of what happened around 1989, it is important to bring Eastern and Central Europe into conversation with other global regions; and that the former Eastern Bloc served as an important node in a larger, global transformation. Insisting on the “Second World’s” place in the global history of the past five decades, this handbook challenges straightforward core-periphery dichotomies. The contributions to this volume provide different case studies – some national, some comparative, some international or global – each illustrating particular trends and developments.