Download or read book Style and Socialism written by Susan Emily Reid and published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book takes as its premise the notion that material culture can help explain the experience of state socialism as lived by ordinary people in Eastern Europe. It provides a revealing window through which to examine the interaction between official state rhetoric and state command on the one hand, and the popular applications of the state's material products on the other. From street fashion to modern art, from the design of state buildings to wallpaper, interconnections between politics and ideology, cultural policy formation and consumption are shown to be a matter of complex negotiation.