ABSTRACT
In East-Central European (ECE) societies that underwent a rapid modernisation under state socialism an important issue concerned the ways in which emergent economic activities, centred on the formal command economy, transformed economic practices that existed prior to the implementation of state socialism. One area of research has indicated how the home and the domestic sphere became an important element in the ways that individuals tried to ‘escape’ from the economic and political demands of state socialism (Kideckel 1993). The private sphere, it was argued, enabled individuals to find a way of negotiating the rapid transformation of their lives. At the same time, Creed (1998) has argued that the cultures of community practice and organisation in rural Bulgaria provided a basis for sustaining the formal, command economy and represented a way of ‘domesticating’ state socialism.
