Subcultures as Active Agents of the Post-Communist Transition in Eastern Europe

This edited volume explores the transformation of post-communist societies following the Bulgarian case in the period 1990s–2010s. By identifying, analysing, and typologizing the subcultural groups that became active agents of social change in Eastern Europe, the book brings forth an integrative theory of social development.

Based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines the perspectives of Political Sciences, Sociology, Social History, and Social Anthropology, the volume creates a theoretical toolkit that offers an effective application of subcultural theory to theories of social development, social transformation, and social transitions. Organized into three parts, Part 1 analyses, on a macro, societal level, structural changes in societies, and how social change is sought commutatively and culturally. Part 2 presents five subcultures that can be identified as active subjects of social change in Bulgaria in the 1980s–2010s. The political ones: the subculture of "Real socialism" (ex-communists, former communists) and the Anti-communism subculture, the economic ones of the "Mutri" and the subculture of "Honest businessmen" (new capitalists), and the cultural ones of the "Chalga/Popfilk". Part 3 mainly examines the social change in Bulgaria through the 'realms of memory'.

Subcultures as Active Agents of the Post-Communist Transition in Eastern Europe will be of interest to undergraduate students of East European Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as practitioners working in the fields of cultural heritage, musical studies, archives, and libraries.

Alexander Karakachanov teaches political science and philosophical anthropology full-time at the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies and lectures part-time at Sofia University. He completed his Ph.D. at the Institute of Philosophy of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and has authored several publications, including Man and Consciousness (2011), Philosophy of Man (2014), and Current Issues in Political Science: Cultural- Anthropological Approach (2024).