Food & Everyday Life in the Postsocialist World

Download or read book Food & Everyday Life in the Postsocialist World written by Melissa L. Caldwell and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the Soviet Union and eastern Europe during the socialist period, food emerged as a symbol of both the successes and failures of socialist ideals of progress, equality, and modernity. By the late 1980s, the arrival of McDonald's behind the Iron Curtain epitomized the changes that swept across the socialist world. Not quite two decades later, the effects of these arrivals were evident in the spread of foreign food corporations and their integration into local communities. This book explores the role played by food--as commodity, symbol, and sustenance--in the transformation of life in Russia and eastern Europe since the end of socialism. Changes in food production systems, consumption patterns, food safety, and ideas about health, well-being, nationalism, and history provide useful perspectives on the meaning of the postsocialist transition for those who lived through it.