Product Description: This compelling ethnographic study describes how two groups of Romanian industrial workers have fared since the end of socialism. Once labor's elite, the celebrated coal miners of the Jiu Valley and the chemical workers of the Fagaras region had many social privileges and often derived genuine satisfaction from their work...read more

Product Description: Before the former Yugoslavia was divided by wars, its inhabitants successfully lived side by side in peace. This collection seeks to explain how former neighbors became enemies, with the hope that understanding what drove these peoples apart will help us discover ways for them to coexist in peace again...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

One of the most profound contradictions experienced in many socialist countries is that a system designed to create people motivated by the needs of society has in fact produced individuals driven by self-interest, distrust, and apathy. The Solitude of Collectivism offers a fascinating portrait of the transformation of Romanian village life through the four decades of socialist rule and during the first uncertain days after the revolution of 1989.