{"product_id":"austerities-and-aspirations-a-comparative-history-of-growth-consumption-and-quality-of-life-in-east-central-europe-since-1945-9789633863510","title":"Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis monograph updates existing scholarship on the economic performance of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland since 1945, contrasting it to Western Europe. For this longitudinal comparative exercise, the author goes beyond the traditional growth paradigm and analyzes the historical patterns of consumption and leisure, as well as quality of life, broadly understood, aspects that Tomka argues can best be analyzed in relation to one other. By adopting this \"triple approach\", his analysis relies not only on economic history and economics, but also on the methods and results of sociology and demography. Tomka's three pillar description shows that the pre-WWI period was the time when East Central Europe was closest to Western Europe. The interwar period sustained this level. The book thus dispels the widespread myth of the communist era as one of catching up and convergence. Beyond providing useful quantitative information, the author provides insight on the scholarly debates ranging from the factors of growth to demographic developments to the complexities of consumption in communist regimes. The analysis finally demonstrates that the post-communist transition, despite its high social and economic costs, allowed for qualitative and quantitative convergence, stalled only by the financial crisis of 2008.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The prominent Hungarian social historian, Béla Tomka, has written an important book on socialist and post-socialist economies in Central Europe. His central tenet is that the traditional analysis of economic growth and living standards, which quantitative economic historians have undertaken, does not provide a complete picture of comparative economic development. Only by investigating what growth meant for ordinary consumers and households, can we understand the motives for modernisation and evaluate its societal impact. Austerities and Aspirations makes the ambitious attempt to assess the economic development of East Central Europe in a comparative perspective based on three dimensions of progress: growth, the standard of living, and consumption.\" -- Tamás Vonyó * Connections *\u003cbr\u003e\"The well-constructed book consists of five main chapters, with several sub- chapters leaving space for the elaboration of details. The introduction conceptualizes the triple approach to well-being: the concepts of economic growth, consumption, and quality of life. Tomka explains his approach by saying that it is meant to overcome the deficiencies of economic analysis focusing merely on GDP and economic output, while the available data on consumption practices and quality of life might facilitate a more complex understanding of economic and social history. While an overall analysis is given of thirteen Western and Northern countries considered to be 'Western Europe', the focus is on East Central Europe, which in this case is restricted to the V4 countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary).\" http:\/\/ojs.elte.hu\/hsce\/article\/view\/2947\/2780 -- Fanni Svégel * Historical Studies on Central Europe *\u003cbr\u003e\"The author’s main aim is to present the economic growth not only in terms of GDP growth, but also in terms of improvements in consumption and the quality of life, as opposed to previous research. His argument is convincing: GDP has a number of components that do not at all reflect the real living standards of a society. Béla Tomka’s book is indispensable for those looking for data on the history of the post-1945 era. One can argue with the narrative, but much less with the data.\" http:\/\/real.mtak.hu\/138094\/1\/Cental_European_Horizons_doi_10.51918ceh.2021.2.7.pdf -- Miklós Mitrovits * Cental European Horizons *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eAusterities and Aspirations\u003c\/em\u003e provides a 'triple approach' to economic development in East-Central Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia and its successor states, and Hungary). Aiming to go beyond the perspective of economic growth alone, Tomka considers economic growth along with consumption and quality of life. Taking a comparative perspective, he assesses convergences and divergences between East-Central Europe and Western Europe. In the reviewer’s opinion, the book is a useful comparative study of various economic developments in the region, but Tomka remains rather implicit about his value judgement behind choosing certain economic indicators and does not engage with more critical approaches to economic growth.\"\u003c\/p\u003e -- Martin Babička * Soudobé Dějiny *\u003cbr\u003e\"Das Buch ist sowohl als Einführung als auch Nachschlagewerk für den Gegenstand – und das über Ostmitteleuropa hinaus – zu empfehlen.\" -- André Steiner * Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Volumul lui Béla Tomka reprezintă, în mod indubitabil, un pas semnificativ în analiza comparativă a situaţiei între statele est-europene în ceea ce priveşte consumul, creşterea economică şi calitatea vieţii europene, raportat la statele din apusul continen- tului. \u003cem\u003eAusterities and Aspirations\u003c\/em\u003e, în ciuda limitărilor de ordin geografic şi statistic, contribuie la o mai bună înţelegere a modului în care economiile de comandă au răspuns provocărilor de ordin societal în perioada regimurilor socialiste. De asemenea, volumul lui Béla Tomka ne ajută să înţelegem mai bine limitările cu care se confruntă istoriografia central-est europeană (şi nu numai) în încercarea de a ilustra anumite situaţii comparative cu Europa de vest, pornind, fie şi doar de la diferenţa de calitate între produse, modul în care era calculat venitul naţional sau standardele de calitate a vieţii.\" https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_url?url=https:\/\/sai.cercetare.org\/ojs\/index.php\/sai\/article\/download\/528\/367\u0026amp;hl=hu\u0026amp;sa=X\u0026amp;d=8845447488290667687\u0026amp;ei=WZ1QY_DrMZCSy9YP4vK1cA\u0026amp;scisig=AAGBfm0BaaqIoQCaOcjBWV9_NldKLFs0-Q\u0026amp;oi=scholaralrt\u0026amp;html=\u0026amp;pos=2\u0026amp;folt=kw\u003c\/p\u003e -- Ştefan-Marius DEACONU * Studii și articole de istorie *\u003cbr\u003e\"T.s dreifacher Zugang – Wachstum, Konsum, Lebensqualität – einen spannenden Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte Europas bzw. Ostmitteleuropas leistet. Der Umfang der in die Analyse und zahlreichen Illustrationen einbezogenen Daten nötigt Respekt ab. Wer die Region in den vorhandenen Überblickswerken als stiefmütterlich behandelt ansieht, findet hier Genugtuung und ausreichend Daten für aussagekräftige Vergleiche und Schlussfolgerungen.\" https:\/\/doi.org\/10.25627\/202271411283 -- Victoria Harms * Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung *\u003cbr\u003e\"Tomka’s book is an excellent addition to the small, albeit growing literature that takes a pan-European approach to economic history and goes beyond GDP to also focus on well-being. Many scholars, especially those not familiar with Central and Eastern Europe, will benefit from reading the book. Future research could focus on comparing the developmental experience of CEE not with Western Europe, which has always been well ahead of CEE in development, but with Southern Europe (Greece, Spain and Portugal), which throughout centuries shared similar growth drivers and constraints as CEE.\" https:\/\/eh.net\/book_reviews\/austerities-and-aspirations-a-comparative-history-of-growth-consumption-and-quality-of-life-in-east-central-europe-since-1945\/ -- Marcin Piatkowski * EH.Net *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eForeword\u003cbr\u003e 1 Introduction: comparisons and the triple approach to well-being\u003cbr\u003e 2 Economic growth: catching up and falling behind\u003cbr\u003e 2.1 Measuring economic output\u003cbr\u003e 2.2 Trends and stages of growth in Western Europe\u003cbr\u003e 2.3 Trajectories of growth in East Central Europe\u003cbr\u003e 3 Consumption: structures, practices and policies\u003cbr\u003e 3.1 Changing consumption patterns in Western Europe\u003cbr\u003e 3.2 Consumption in communist East Central Europe\u003cbr\u003e 4 Quality of life: towards a more comprehensive understanding of well-being\u003cbr\u003e 4.1 Conceptual and methodological issues\u003cbr\u003e 4.2 Trajectories of well-being in Western Europe\u003cbr\u003e 4.3 The quality of life in East Central Europe\u003cbr\u003e 5 Determinants of change: growth accounting and beyond\u003cbr\u003e 5.1 Factors of economic growth\u003cbr\u003e 5.2 Determinants of quality of life\u003cbr\u003e 5.3 Causes of convergence and divergence\u003cbr\u003e 6 Passages to the new millennium: the evolving order of divisions\u003cbr\u003e 6.1 Economic growth in Western Europe at the turn of the millennium. Changes in the quality of life\u003cbr\u003e 6.2 East Central Europe after the regime change: economic transformation, consumer aspirations and the pursuit of well-being\u003cbr\u003e 7 Conlusions: lessons of the triple approach\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Appendix\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e List of tables and figures\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Central European University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51047191445847,"sku":"9789633863510","price":140.36,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9789633863510.jpg?v=1750970612","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/austerities-and-aspirations-a-comparative-history-of-growth-consumption-and-quality-of-life-in-east-central-europe-since-1945-9789633863510","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}