Class, distinction and habitus have a contested position in the political and social sciences. No less controversial are the concepts in the humanities, even though the study of class in cultural studies seems to be long past its prime. The research agenda of Eurasia looks a bit different. Due to the allegedly different path to modernity, exploration of class, distinction, and habitus in popular culture offers interesting stimuli even today, as demonstrated by the mentioned conference, held in Prague on 26-28 October 2023. This brought together 30 scholars from 15 different countries to unravel the complex tapestry woven by the confluence of culture, politics, and aesthetics across diverse societies.

In the opening session, AGÁTA KRAVČÍKOVÁ (Prague) discussed the concept of taste using the example of workers’ theatre and proletarian culture. While in the interwar period this culture was a marginal genre, after the communist takeover it became the official expression. It was to pave the way for the cultural enlightenment. MIOARA ANTON (Bucharest) investigated the political campaigns and mass media that spread this “new socialist culture” among the population, especially in the urbanized centers, where many residents of rural origins and former peasant found a home. In some cases, these campaigns have failed, and party authorities have had to adapt to the tastes of the majority society. The emancipatory and avant-garde character of culture faded, and patriarchal notions of appropriate look and behavior took its place. ALEXANDRA BARDAN (Bucharest) shed light on the importance of hairstyles and hairdressing in the shaping the normative “socialist” body and gender, linking habitus with politics. In the late socialism, party authorities used campaigns against drinking, theft and bullying, for example, to improve workers’ performance.

The post-communist transformation challenged the working class and its culture, as VALENTINA PRICOPIE (Bucharest), ALINA THIEMANN (Paris) and AURELIAN GIUGĂL (Bucharest) argued. The concept of class in political discourse has been abandoned, and workingmen were shamed because they did not fit the idea of economically independent citizens who contribute to the prosperity of the nation. As such they did not deserve social recognition. Very illustratively this shift could be observed in the example of commercial advertisements and popular television series that fundamentally devaluated manual labor. JAN GÉRYK and JANA TOKARSKÁ (Prague) problematized this somewhat one-way development by pointing out that the working-class has dissolved into the post-traditional notion of the common people [the folk], which post-communist politicians were very happy to glorify and, through public relations strategies, to claim as their own. Populism intertwined with fan democracy and celebrity fandoms replaced political ideas.

The session on "Music and Politics" questioned notions of nostalgia and mourning for proletarian (socialist) culture. PADRRAIG PARKHURST (Melbourne) and JOUNI JÄRVINEN (Helsinki) highlighted the distinctive way in which rock and punk music in the communist dictatorship of the 1970s replayed daily life of ordinary people and their quiet to work. ONDŘEJ DANIEL (Prague) has shown how in the late 1980s and early 1990s, alternative and independent music genres rapidly changed and step by step was integrated into the global cultural industry. ANNA KAZNACHEEVA (Prague) focused on the Russian reception of French singer Mylène Farmer’s music video and asked how the consumption of highbrow Western pop worked as a means of acquiring valued cultural capital. Similarly, JADE JIANG (Edinburgh) traced the development of the jazz scene as a process of mobilization of foreign cultural forms by various privileged social groups. Jazz education was institutionalized and participants without systematic training in jazz gradually excluded. Jazz musicians from middle class background enjoyed tremendous advantages and established themselves as a cultural elite in the music industry by creating a new cultural distinction in the China imbued with socialism-market economy. According to ÁDÁM HAVAS (Barcelona), jazz was at the forefront of heated debates provoked by the racial tensions between national music traditions and emerging forms of popular culture that challenged the prevailing status quo in the cultural hierarchy of East and West. SARAH CHAKER (Vienna) added that despite liberal rhetoric emphasizing individual freedoms and rights, street music performances in major Austrian “cultural” and “creative” cities are strictly regulated.

In discussing the influence of Bourdieu's conceptual framework on the understanding of class structure in different post-socialist societies, STEFAN VILOTIĆ (Novi Sad), PIOTR MARZEC (Essex) and ŽELJKA TONKOVIĆ (Zadar) empathized the similarity of the class structure in post-1989 Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in terms of the principle of the volume and composition of capital to that observed in West European societies. In Croatia, there is a distinction between those who are simultaneously cosmopolitan and have a taste for elite culture and those who dislike elite cultural products. Strong affection for light entertainment, traditional culture and other popular formats was associated with lower positions on the class hierarchy. Among the elderly, a high proportion of people with such tastes prevailed. JOHAN LINDELL (Uppsala) linked the rise in inequalities in Sweden to a specific area of lifestyle, such as television preferences, and supported the view that the consumption of culture serves to maintain differences between social classes.

Summarizing the results of the conference, it should be appreciated that the speakers used not only a static but also a dynamic approach, although many of them were not historians. They incorporated the perspective of long durée and included historical changes in their research (“path dependency”). Some papers found a discontinuity before and after 1989 in how class, distinction and habitus were represented in popular culture on the one hand. On the other, there were continuities in the extent, which culture in a broader sense contributed to the shaping of the social differences and hierarchies. Many concepts of Western cultural studies were discussed, often supported by a wealth of empirical evidence, some of which was also gently revised.

Conference overview:

Ondřej Daniel (Prague): Introduction

The Politics of Good Taste and Looks

Agáta Kravčíková (Prague): The Taste of the Low: Workers’ Theatre and the Transformation of the Working Class Culture between the 1870s and 1940s

Mioara Anton (Bucharest): The Education of Good Taste in Socialist Romania

Alexandra Bardan (Bucharest): Mapping the Eastern European Look: Hair, Hairstyling, and Hairdressing in Romania, 1965- 1985

Ivan Lavrentjev (Tartu): Working Class Culture at the Dvigatel Industrial Metal Plant in the Late Soviet Union

The Politics of Class

Valentina Pricopie (Bucharest): Discourse on “Class” in Communist Romania. A Case-Study on Scînteia Newspaper, 1948-1989

Petra Požgaj (Zagreb): The Production of Distinctions in Popular Yugoslav Youth Magazines

Anna Ronell (Medford): Intelligentsia and Habitus in Nina Voronel’s With No Embellishment

Alina Thiemann (Paris): Dorel and the Devaluation of Labor: Exploring the Representation of the Working Class in Post-Communist Romania

Music and Politics

Padraig Parkhurst (Melbourne): Red Rockers as Working-Class Heroes: The Formation of the Ostrock ‘Genre Public’ in the ‘Classless Society’ of 1970s East Germany

Jouni Järvinen (Helsinki): Music that Infuriated Commies: Rock, Performativity and Symbolic Politics in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia

Adam Rubczak (Toruń): Intelligentsia’s Ethos in Polish Independent Music after 1989

Ondřej Daniel (Prague): “We, who are not as others”: Studying Music, Youth and Class in Czech Post-Socialism

Anna Kaznacheeva (Prague): Popsa Versus the French Chanson: Popular Music and Class in Post-Soviet Russia

Sarah Chaker (Vienna): Post-Liberal Policies, Urban Planning and Social Inequality among Street Musicians

Jelena Gligorijević (Dublin): A Critical Overview of Theories Using the Class Concept Vis-à-Vis Popular Music Practices of the Ex-Yugoslav Diaspora

Jazz and Politics

Jade Jiang (Edinburgh): Becoming Cultural Elites: History of the Chinese Jazz Field Since the 1980s

Ádám Havas (Barcelona): “Swinging” Cultural Difference in Eastern Europe: The Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora

Class on TV and the Silver Screen

Blanka Nyklová, Petr Gibas (Prague): DIY Gendered Practices at Czechoslovak Television in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s

Aurelian Giugăl, Romina Surugiu, Alexandru Gavriș (Bucharest): The TV Show “Las Fierbinți”: Mediation of Inequalities and Marginalization in a Neoliberal Romania

Jan Géryk (Prague), Jana Tokarská (Prague): Politicians and their “Folk” Self-Presentation on TV and Social Media

Irena Šentevska (Belgrade): Posljednji podvig diverzanta Oblaka: Revolution and Class Dynamics in Yugoslav Cinema

Anca Serbanuta (Bucharest): Representations of the Romanian Peasant in Popular Media

Domagoj Krpan (Rijeka): Marshal Tito's Spirit: Communist Elites On the Road to a New Class

Bourdieu and the Post-1989 Transformation

Stefan Vilotič (Novi Sad): The Role of Cultural Participation in Reproducing Social Inequalities in Serbia

Piotr Marzec (Essex): A Bourdieusian Analysis of the Class Structure of Poland after 1989 – On the Path To Convergence with Western Europe?

Željka Tonković (Zadar): Taste Structures and Class Divisions in Contemporary Croatia

Johan Lindell, Andreas Melldahl (Uppsala): Class Distinction and Culture Consumption: The Case of Television Preferences in Post-Social Democratic Sweden

Jiří Šafr (Prague), Miroslav Paulíček (Ostrava): Reproduction of Cultural Taste: Children’s Emerging Habitus and Parental Social Class

Zdeněk Nebřenský (Prague): Conclusions