Deserved - by Till Hilmar (Paperback)

About the Book

Till Hilmar examines memories of the postsocialist transition in East Germany and the Czech Republic to offer new insights into the power of narratives about economic change.

Book Synopsis

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were completely disrupted, and the meanings attached to work were drastically altered. How did people who found themselves living under state socialism one day and capitalist democracy the next adjust to the changing social order and its new system of values?

Till Hilmar examines memories of the postsocialist transition in East Germany and the Czech Republic to offer new insights into the power of narratives about economic change. Despite the structural nature of economic shifts, people often interpret life outcomes in individual terms. Many are deeply attached to the belief that success and failure must be deserved. Emphasizing individual effort, responsibility, and character, they pass moral judgments based on a person's fortunes in the job market. Hilmar argues that such frameworks represent ways of making sense of the profound economic and social dislocations after 1989. People craft narratives of deservingness about themselves and others to solve the problem of belonging in a new social order.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with engineers and care workers as well as historical and comparative analysis of the breakdown of communism in Eastern Europe, Deserved sheds new light on the moral imagination of capitalism and the experience of economic change. This book also offers crucial perspective on present-day politics, showing how notions of deservingness and moral worth have propelled right-wing populism.

Review Quotes

The strength of Hilmar's book lies in its contribution to memory studies. While memory studies scholars have paid a lot of attention to memories of repression, resistance, and political transformation, there is, as he rightly observes, 'a dearth of approaches to economic change in sociological thinking about memory.'-- "Australian Outlook"

Fascinating case studies.-- "Survival"

A novel and conceptually rich take on the history and memory of the post-socialist transformations.-- "CEU Review of Books"

The book is original, illuminating, and consistently insightful, and it shows a deep acquaintance with the literature on memory and social identity. As such Deserved is a highly valuable contribution to cultural sociology.-- "Understanding Society"

Deserved is the first full-fledged theory of perception of economic justice in the field of memory studies. This book will resonate with the growing interest in economic aspects of social memory, and Hilmar's concept of 'moral deservingness' will become a useful tool for studying perception of other instances of economic changes.--Joanna Wawrzyniak, coeditor of Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989

Deserved is a fascinating journey into the turmoil of post-1989 transformation in Central Europe. On the basis of in-depth interviews, Hilmar reveals the moral grammar that surrounds the remembrance of economic ruptures and how the language of deservingness and inclusion makes up the fabric of society.--Steffen Mau, Professor of Sociology, Humboldt University of Berlin

In this astute and captivating analysis of disruptive economic change, Hilmar moves persuasively beyond the 'morality' and 'economy' binary to draw a timely lesson: it's in the very fabric of social relations, even our memory of them, that we pursue moral worth and economic deservingness. Read this gem of a book that, yes, deserves wide attention.--Nina Bandelj, coeditor of Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works

What if memory were not only about war, exile, trauma, and genocide? Hilmar's inspiring work sets a new and crucial agenda for memory studies by highlighting the importance of economic memories for understanding contemporary societies. Deserved makes a clarion call for putting socioeconomic perspectives back into the study of remembrance.--Sarah Gensburger, coauthor of Beyond Memory: Can We Really Learn from the Past?

About the Author

Till Hilmar is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna and a faculty fellow at Yale University's Center for Cultural Sociology.