Everyday Revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Balkans

Overview & Synopsis

This book draws on ethnographic case studies from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to examine “everyday revolutions,” shifting focus from spectacular uprisings to the subtle, dispersed, and often overlooked practices through which people challenge power and reshape social life. Exploring a region often imagined as either a cradle of upheaval or politically stagnant, the book highlights acts of resistance, refusal, care, and creativity that unsettle dominant orders without conforming to grand narratives of revolutionary change. From hospital wards, households, and schools to digital archives, satire, and grassroots cultural scenes, the contributors trace how actors negotiate constraints, contest authority, and enact alternative futures in the present. By probing blurred boundaries between continuity and rupture, the mundane and the exceptional, they interrogate who is recognised as a political subject and what counts as revolutionary action. “Everyday revolutions” are proposed as an analytical lens to reveal how ordinary practices carry transformative potential, expanding understandings of political struggle and illuminating less visible yet profoundly consequential modes of social change. Accessibly written, this interdisciplinary volume speaks to undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, and human geography, as well as those with an interest in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.