Description
Book SynopsisEconomists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists of the region studied transnational cultural encounters in the post-communist economies by scoping on smaller and bigger firms in the new market conditions, governmental bodies that shaped economic policies and regulations, and the academic settings of economic science. Producers and mediators of economic culture are examined in various contexts. Comparative studies are offered in three areas: entrepreneurship, governance of economic change, and economic knowledge. Case studies analyze country specific issues. The numbers and scope of encounters between the economic actors of the "East" and the "West" - which have dramatically increased during the past two decades - are scrutinized. Chapters in the volume reveal how indigenous actors - workers, entrepreneurs, government officials, economists, think tank analysts etc. - in Eastern Europe, select (accept, adjust and mix) certain cultural packages while rejecting others. Although cultural exchanges are rarely symmetric, there is little to prove that "strong Western" culture devours (civilizes) the "weak Eastern" one, or "clashes of civilizations" drive capitalist transformations in the region.
Trade Review"The impressive international team of contributors has done a good job. The case studies on the introduction of western banking institutions and culture to various eastern European countries, entrepreneurship, privatization of brewing, transmittal and absorption of western norms, and the adjustment of eastern economics to modern western trends are all highly interesting and convincing on the topic of the 'hybridization' process. As the editors sum up in the prologue, 'the nascent capitalism in the region is much less driven from outside, and its local actors are much more active and inventive' than generally thought. Although cultural exchange was often asymmetric, the authors think that it would be a grave simplifi cation to talk about a ‘strong Western’ culture that devours the ‘weak Eastern’ culture'." * Slavic Review *
Table of ContentsContents; Prologue PART 1. ENTREPRENEURSHIP: HYBRIDIZATION "UNDER INFLUENCE"? Czechs under "Italian rule". The Zivnostenska Bank Embedded encounters and global aspirations. The RBA Zagreb The rise of a banking empire in Eastern Europe. The Raiffeisen Bank International From local to global and vice versa. Transforming food and drink industries in Eastern Europe Between Hauzmajstor and Komon sens. Repatriate entrepreneurship in Serbia A small miracle without foreign investors. The Villany wine and westernized local knowledge Cherishing informality and emulating the West. The success story of the Transylvania General Import Export Company PART 2. STATE GOVERNANCE: FROM TAKING TO RESISTING WESTERN NORMS Cloning or Hybridization? East-West encounters in the SAPARD program Transmitting Western norms to the East: The SAPARD program as a hybrid. Mutual adaptation versus hybridization: rural development programs in Eastern Europe From diligent pupils to noisy resisters. MEPs from Eastern Europe Mladen Lazic: (Mis)understanding each other's priorities: the Topola rural development program PART 3. ECONOMIC KNOWLEDGE: DOES ANYTHING GO? New knowledge - old behaviour. Reforming economic education in Eastern Europe Mixing etatism with liberalism. Eastern European think tanks in the world of applied economics Soft institutionalism. Receiving new institutional economics in Croatia Beyond the basic instinct? On the reception of new institutional economics in Eastern Europe The spread of Western ideas and the economics epistemic community in Romania Epilogue
