ABSTRACT
The story captures in a nutshell some of the well known philosophical problems associated with the core assumptions of neoliberalism. In the 1970s, Elias was a world famous scholar enjoying the interest of many younger disciples in the booming sociology, anthropology, and history departments of the Western world. In contrast, the state and social collectivities were seen as secondary and except for kinship and a narrowly defined 'civil society' artificial. This chapter explains why the relationship between neoliberalism and personhood in post socialism, the title of this collection, remains an urgent issue. Makovicky points out that the ideas of 'flexibility' and 'self-direction' played key roles in this popular education project. The chapter talks about the paradoxes and contradictions of living a life in severely neoliberalized social contexts against the backdrop of a state-socialist past and an insecure peripheral capitalist presence.
