Melegh's work offers a powerful analysis of the sociological and symbolic meanings of East-West in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Melegh exposes the underbelly of liberal characterizations of East-West, highlighting the polarizing effect of extreme nationalism and ethnic racism. The theoretical underpinnings of this work involve the ideas of preeminent theorists such as Karl Mannheim, Michel Foucault and more recently Maria Todorova and Iver Neumann. The importance of this work lies in its ability to cast into fine relief how the "East-West Slope" oriented negatively from West to East has emerged from liberal characterizations of this project. In addition this is one of the first attempts to link post-colonial analysis to developments in Eastern Europe.
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright page
- Table of Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- CHAPTER 1. Liberal humanitarian utopia and Eastern and Central Europe
- 1.1. On the slope. Introductory examples of East–West discourses in the late 1990s
- 1.2. Liberal utopia versus Orientalism and coloniality
- 1.3. From modernization discourses to qualitative/civilizational discourses
- CHAPTER 2.Exclusions “East” and “West”. Population discourses and the civilizational slope
- 2.1. “Eastern” seaweed?
- 2.2. The comparative study of population discourses
- 2.3. American population discourses on the “unworthy” in the first half of the 20th century
- 2.4. Looking down the East–West slope. Regional otherness in the “Western” perspective: from modernizationist to qualitative/civilizational discourses
- 2.5. Being on the Slope: Hungarian and East European population discourses in the 20th century
- 2.6. The seaweed
- CHAPTER 3. Floating East. Eastern and Central Europe on the map of global institutional actors
- 3.1. Globalization and the East–West dichotomy
- 3.2. Homogeneity and heterogeneity
- 3.3. Maps of global actors
- 3.4. On the slope
- 3.5. Positioning on the slope. The discursive order of the East–West slope in the era of globalization
- CHAPTER 4.I am suspicious of myself. East–West narratives at the turn of the millenium
- 4.1. Individual narratives and East–West slope
- 4.2. On the method
- 4.3. Forms of narrative
- 4.4. Combinations of different East–West narratives
- CONCLUSION The sociology of the East–West slope and the recomposition of Eastern Europe
- 1. The fall of state socialism
- 1.1. The East–West slope and the return of the elites
- 2. The East–West slope as the imaginary of the world economy
- 3. The East–West slope and the recent social and political order in Eastern Europe
- 3.1. The East–West slope and the consolidation of a new international order after the collapse of state socialism
- 3.2. The East–West slope and the consolidation of social and political order in Eastern Europe
- 4. Possibilities of critical sociology
- Bibliography
- Index
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