Cultura populară din România în perioada comunistă. O analiză a influenţelor occidentale şi sovietice din perspectiva studiilor culturale
Romanian popular culture in Communism. An analysis of Western and Soviet influences from the perspective of cultural studies

Summary/Abstract: The paper starts from the theoretical perspective opened by the ‘culturalist’ approach, that introduced the so-called ‘break’ from the end of ‘50s in cultural studies, and took into consideration the meaning of the concept ‘popular culture’ not as opposite to that of ‘elite culture’ or ‘high culture’, but as a term which refers to the cultural products, practices and artifacts produced by and for people, also with a special focus on their complex relationship with the political and economic agenda of the period. The research focuses on the popular culture in the communist Romanian society between 1947-1989. The general objective of this larger study was to outline the main aspects of the popular culture in the communist Romania and to identify the popular culture practices and artifacts and their roots. In this paper there will be presented the results regarding the Western and Soviet influences on Romanian popular culture. I analyzed both the practices of popular culture (what is included in the term of lived culture) and the products and artifacts (as a part of the larger concept of lifestyle). Besides this, because these issues have been little explored from this perspective in Romania, I also paid close attention to unanticipated themes that could arise from the empirical research. The method used for accomplishing the objectives of the research was the social biography (in the form of life histories). More exactly, I used the technique of ‘multiple autobiographies’, understanding the term in its classic sense, as subjects’ narrations about themselves, about their own lives. This method allowed me to obtain ‘subjective’ data about the ‘lived culture’, and also about the existence, evolution, appropriation, negotiation, resistance or rejection of the popular culture products, which in the end could lead us to outline the situation of popular culture elements in Romania in the communist epoch.

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