Beyond the Café/Pub Split: Interlocking Urbanity and Rurality in the Popular Culture of East Central European Societies

Given the specificity of nation-building processes in East Central Europe, the narrative axis of national movements has linked the city and the village. The linear process of urbanisation has relied on a logic that interlocks rural and urban spaces in this region. Both capitalist and state socialist modernisation brought an influx of rural migrants from the countryside to urban centres on the one hand, and on the other, gave rise to numerous artistic and social movements which fostered an interest in rural space and culture (eg. folklorism, (agro-)tourism, rural sentimentalism). It is only from this point that we see the emergence of tensions between popular culture rooted in traditional folk culture, cultural activities stimulated by new technologies and the everyday life cultural strategies of urban communities and subcultures. Different political regimes during the 20th century brought to the fore either rural or urban segments of the population, which in turn had a significant impact on popular culture. After the fall of state socialist regimes, transition discourses under the heading of the Washington consensus in economic terms along with European Union accession policies, significantly restructured the interrelatedness of the city and the village. This conference will focus on a question of in-betweenness that might be dubbed “rurbanity” comprising challenging phenomena that go beyond the simple urban/rural, “café/pub” split.