Postsocialist Dialectics or Postindustrial Critique? On Discomfort in a Former Socialist Model City in East Germany

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, the inhabitants of Hoyerswerda, the German Democratic Republic’s second socialist model city, have struggled through de-industrialisation, unemployment, outmigration and urban decay. With the help of Karl Polanyi’s concept of ‘countermovement’, this essay scrutinises their various critiques of contemporary forms of capitalism. I investigate how these critiques help them to navigate their hometown’s prospects in the postindustrial era in order to rethink more generally the temporal implications of the social sciences’ conceptualisations of postsocialist critique. I approach my interlocutors’ expressions of discomfort amidst current political and economic crises as complex negotiations of the postindustrial present that are not determined by their socialist past.

Notes

Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

1 See, for example, Rudd (2000), Dunn (2004), Jancius (2006), Murawski (2018), Kurtović (2019).

2 See also Nafus (2006), Gilbert (2006), Gilbert et al. (2008), Thelen (2011), Bach and Murawski (2020). 

3 See, for example, Chelcea and Druţǎ’s (2016) spot-on concept of ‘zombie socialism’, Müller’s (2018) idea of the ‘Global East’, and Gentile’s (2020) work in ‘post-Wall’ urban studies.

4 Unless otherwise indicated below, the more recent data in this essay are based on informal conversations with the city’s residents, as well as my own personal observations and experiences during short post-fieldwork visits to Hoyerswerda.

5 For example, Foucault (1977).

6 See Scheiring, this issue.

7 See, for example, Schröder’s (2019) insightful discussion.

8 See also Bartha (2013).

9 For example, one interlocutor underlined that the citizens of Hoyerswerda should have known all along about the many crises of capitalism from their GDR ‘Citizen’s Lessons’ at school, Staatsbürgerkunde-Unterricht (Ringel 2018, p. 49).

10 Personal conversation with the author, January 2009.

11 For further details on the Zukunftswerkstatt of the 2007 Third City projects, see: https://www.kufa-hoyerswerda.de/die-dritte-stadt.html. For more information on the 2012 Auszeit project, see: https://www.kufa-hoyerswerda.de/auszeit-nachdenken-uber-h.html, accessed 4 October 2021.

12 Such as Ther (2019), who was also inspired by Polanyi’s work; see also Böick (2018) and Pötzl (2019).

13 Personal conversation with the author, Hoyerswerda Neustadt, April 2009.

14 See also Ringel (2016).

15 Cf. Brandtstädter (2007).

16 For other post socialist examples, see Kaneff (2004) and Haukanes and Trnka (2013).

17 For two media analyses of the AfD’s anti-wolf election campaign material, see Höhne (2019) and Haselrieder and Bartz (2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Felix Ringel

Felix Ringel, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK. Email: [email protected]