Urban Cultures in (Post) Colonial Central Europe (Comparative Cultural Studies)

Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw are cities indelibly marked by more than forty years of Soviet influence. Urban Cultures in Post Colonial Central Europe explores the ways in which these major urban centers have redefined their identities in the last two decades. Agata Anna Lisiak analyzes Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw as (post)colonial cities because their politics, cultures, societies, and economies have been shaped by two centers of power: the Soviet Union as the former colonizer whose influence remains visible predominantly in architecture, infrastructure, social relations, and mentalities, and the Western culture and the Western and/or global capital as the current colonizer, whose impact extends over virtually all spheres of urban life. Richly grounded in theoretical traditions ranging from semiotics to comparative cultural studies, this book is an important examination of what it means to be “Central European” in a period of profound cultural change.