Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 16.00 - 17.15
G-8 MAT07 Marketing and Retailing in Post-war Europe
G
Network: Material and Consumer Culture Chair: Christine Fertig
Organizers: - Discussants: -
Lenka Kratka : “To make some Extra Money.” Smuggling and Black Market Trading as Experienced by People Travelling for Business from Czechoslovakia Abroad in the 1970s and 1980s
During the post-WWII years and the Cold War period, business tourism enabled those who travelled outside of Czechoslovakia to not only gain a tourist experience; it also constituted a broadly understood element of “luxury”. This “luxury”, the extraordinariness, related to the possibility of travelling abroad, especially when travelling to countries ... (Show more)
During the post-WWII years and the Cold War period, business tourism enabled those who travelled outside of Czechoslovakia to not only gain a tourist experience; it also constituted a broadly understood element of “luxury”. This “luxury”, the extraordinariness, related to the possibility of travelling abroad, especially when travelling to countries beyond the so-called socialist block, and also to receiving a part of the wage paid in foreign currency. As a consequence, people travelling “for business” could get foreign goods (fashionable, scarce etc.) which meant higher material status for them and their families, thus higher social status. This topic is then closely related to (supposed) efforts to on the one hand take advantage of these economic possibilities and on the other hand the limited amount of foreign currency granted for trips abroad (mainly to capitalist countries) and associated activities such as smuggling, illegal export of foreign currency, trading on the black market, etc. The author will present various forms of these illegal activities, motives, risks on the one hand and benefits on the other. Thus, the paper extends the knowledge of consumerism during the state socialism period. The topic will be processed with a help of archive resources, mainly those from the provenience of the archives of the State Security (secret police). Individual experience will be depicted using approx. three dozens of oral history interviews; in addition, books of memoirs published will be used. (Show less)

Hanna Kuusi : Consuming Sun, Spa and Socialism - Finnish Tourists at the Black Sea Coast in the 1960s–1970s
International mass tourism begun to take shape also in Finland in the 1960s. A popular destination, in addition to the Mediterranean, was the socialist Black Sea Coast of the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. During the same time period package tourism became a target of critique, both in the popular imaginary ... (Show more)
International mass tourism begun to take shape also in Finland in the 1960s. A popular destination, in addition to the Mediterranean, was the socialist Black Sea Coast of the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. During the same time period package tourism became a target of critique, both in the popular imaginary and in academic research. Holiday industry signified stereotypes of ignorant, passive and shallow tourists. The opposite was an individual traveler eager to learn about the local culture, not just willing to consume it. The modern ethos of travel emphasized the encounters with locals as really getting to know the foreign culture. This tension was even more complicated in the case of the socialist countries, where the authorities were not too keen to promote contacts between local and Western citizens. The purpose of my paper is to explore the narratives of Finnish tourists on their holidays at the Black Sea coast focusing on their reflections on experience and agency in the unique context of socialist tourism, and particularly on encounters with the locals and tourists from other countries. The structure of social relations of organized tourism had its limits but could also be challenged. The paper is based mainly on written reminiscences collected in 1981 of which 19 was about a holiday in Sotshi and Jalta, the Soviet Union and 25 in Bulgaria, totally about 800 pages. (Show less)

Silvia Pizzirani : Fill up with Nothing. Cultures of Consumption in the Face of Global Energy Crises in Italy, in the 1970s
The energy crises and global changes that characterized the 1970s were widely studied in their economic and industrial dimension, but less attention has been placed on the sphere of consumption, especially for the Italian case.
The aim of this paper is to analyse how the different consumer cultures and some ... (Show more)
The energy crises and global changes that characterized the 1970s were widely studied in their economic and industrial dimension, but less attention has been placed on the sphere of consumption, especially for the Italian case.
The aim of this paper is to analyse how the different consumer cultures and some key companies (Fiat and Eni) have reacted to the crisis and to italian austerity policies during that decade, a decade of changes in terms of how consuming was conceived by the citizen-consumer, and a shift in the way consumerism was organized. In Italy, austerity was perceived on one hand as a moral revolution against the excess of capitalism: Berlinguer’s famous speech in 1977, about how austerity could be a tool in the fight against the capitalistic and consumerist system in crisis, is an important example. On the other hand, austerity was considered as a device for society control. Both a feminist magazine such as Effe and a fashion and entertainment magazine such as Grazia, express criticism regarding austerity policies, seen as limiting women's freedom and social achievements. Furthermore, major companies such as Eni and Fiat had to rethink their way to talk to consumers, in face of the social and political changes that shaped and interact with consumption.
Focusing on the 1970s would allow to tackle major questions about changes in the global economy and the transformation of the capitalist marketplace from that decade onwards. Looking at energy prices and consumption in general is a way into thinking about how consumers viewed the global economy and their own role – as well as rights and responsibilities – within it. (Show less)

Will Wilson : ‘Greetings from the Oktoberfest’: Postcards, Materiality, and the Celebration of the ‘National Community’ in the Third Reich, 1933-1938
Counting among the more prosaic material objects of tourism and recreation, postcards belong to the materiality of the past; they invite the historian to analyse their materiality within the scope of everyday behaviour. Inexpensive, dependable, and frequent, postal service afforded the postcard considerable usefulness as a means to communicate among ... (Show more)
Counting among the more prosaic material objects of tourism and recreation, postcards belong to the materiality of the past; they invite the historian to analyse their materiality within the scope of everyday behaviour. Inexpensive, dependable, and frequent, postal service afforded the postcard considerable usefulness as a means to communicate among the urban population. As a form of writing, the postcard required of consumers limited demands on their time and efforts of expression. As an inexpensive consumer good, postcards were readily available for popular consumption. It is their commonplace that makes them an invaluable “souvenir of culture”.

Beginning with the postcard craze of the 1890s, the buying, sending, and collecting of postcards remained popular in Germany through the Nazi dictatorship. Making use of the Oktoberfest postcard collection held in the Munich city museum, this paper examines the material and social life of postcards and their senders in the Third Reich. It argues that in engaging the materiality of commercially produced postcards, Oktoberfest visitors actively participated in the celebration and commemoration of the ‘new Germany’ of the racially unified ‘national community’. However, the variety of picture postcards, whether traditional, modern, humorous, or propagandistic, purchased and mailed from the fairgrounds suggests that in their role as consumers, empowered with freedom of choice, fairgoers negotiated the limits of participation in and affirmation of the dictatorship’s idealized racial community on festive display on Munich’s fairgrounds.

This paper addresses the historical question of what do postcards communicate regarding fairgoers’ experiences and interpretations of festivity in the Third Reich. Munich’s Oktoberfest, was a cultural and commercial festival event with wide appeal. It attracted visitors from near and far. In the Nazi period postcards were mailed mainly to German addresses, but many were also sent to destinations in Austria and Switzerland. Commercial postcard publishers ensured that consumers were provided the choice between postcards that contained symbols of the Nazi regime and those that did not. Overwhelmingly, postmarked postcards in Munich’s city museum collection, provided limited visual display of the Nazi regime. Why that is the case raises a number of questions. There is evidence that postcards were collected as a number of them bore the traces of gray-blue construction paper common to photograph collection albums. At the same time, people may have been inclined either to discard Nazi era postcards after 1945 or reluctant to submit them to the museum. Nevertheless the relative absence of postcards prominently displaying the regime’s symbols does suggest that people made deliberate choices as consumers to purchase, use, and mail Oktoberfest picture postcards that denied visual representation of the regime. Thus usage of Oktoberfest picture postcards suggest that the limits of their value as propaganda in support of the regime.

Similar concerns over usage are raised when turning attention to the back side of the postcard. Again the historian is left to consider the significance of the preponderance of traditional and familiar salutations over that of obligatory Nazi greeting suggests that in personal relationships among family and friends colloquial and traditional forms of greeting remained the norm. Their prevalence also suggests that the coercive regime was not overly concerned to police the use of official greetings in colloquial forms of communication in what might be regarded as the public domain of private life. Consequently, the material culture of Oktoberfest postcards constituted both a site of commemoration and process of negotiation in the reordering of German society in accordance with the idea of an ethnically unified ‘national community’. (Show less)



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