“Thanks to its nuanced and multi-layered take on the geographical dimensions of employment, home, land and food provision in late capitalism, this monograph will become essential reading for scholars in the domains of post-socialist area studies, geography, economics, anthropology and sociology, in addition to social, urban and economic development policy practitioners.” (Royal Geographical Society, 2012)
“This book makes a valuable contribution to the theorization of neoliberalization by extending it to the realm of the everyday household economy. It is grounded in rich empirical research in working class neighbourhoods in Bratislava and Krakow and argues that households mitigate and tolerate the pernicious social costs of neoliberal reform to achieve social reproduction.” (Yahoo Finance, 2 November 2010)
From the Inside Flap
Domesticating Neo-Liberalism addresses how we understand the processes of neo-liberalization in post-socialist cities. The book develops a conceptualization of these processes that is grounded in the diversity of everyday economic practices and in the ways that the economies of neo-liberalism are ‘domesticated’. Based on in-depth research in Poland and Slovakia, it explores how households attempt to create the circumstances for their social reproduction at times when labour markets and job prospects are being transformed and social relationships are rapidly changing. It investigates how households not only attempt to make these wider political-economic changes more tolerable but how, in doing so, they also establish some of the conditions for the re-making of neo-liberalization.
From the Back Cover
Domesticating Neo-Liberalism addresses how we understand the processes of neo-liberalization in post-socialist cities. The book develops a conceptualization of these processes that is grounded in the diversity of everyday economic practices and in the ways that the economies of neo-liberalism are ‘domesticated’. Based on in-depth research in Poland and Slovakia, it explores how households attempt to create the circumstances for their social reproduction at times when labour markets and job prospects are being transformed and social relationships are rapidly changing. It investigates how households not only attempt to make these wider political-economic changes more tolerable but how, in doing so, they also establish some of the conditions for the re-making of neo-liberalization.
About the Author
Adrian Smith is Professor of Human Geography and Head of Department at Queen Mary, University of London. He works on the economic and social geographies of transformation from state socialism in East-Central Europe, with a particular focus on industrial and regional change and on community and household economies. This research has involved a number of externally-funded research projects including ESRC, Nuffield, and US National Science Foundation.
Alison Stenning is Reader in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. She has worked on the economic and social geographies of post-socialism for more than 15 years, focusing particularly on issues of work, class, gender and community. She has published two edited books and more than 40 book chapters and articles in this field, based on research funded by, amongst others, the ESRC and the Nuffield Foundation.
Alena Rochovská is a Lecturer at Comenius University in Bratislava. Previously she worked as a Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London on the ESRC-funded project on ‘Social Exclusion, Spaces of Household Economic Practice and Post-Socialism’. She has published widely on the feminisation of poverty, feminist geography, and the geographies of social inequality in Slovakia.
Dariusz Świątek is a researcher at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He previously worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle on the ESRC-funded project on ‘Social Exclusion, Spaces of Household Economic Practice and Post-Socialism’. Swiatek has published widely on unemployment problems, housing market changes and the development of suburban areas in Poland.
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