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Consumption junction6/19/2023 I am socially awkward and terrible at interacting with strangers and this interview was just something that I really didn’t want to do, so I put it off until the very last minute. Being the terrible procrastinator that I am, I simply didn’t do the interview. I have one paper due on Wednesday that I am supposed to do an informational interview for. I had a ton of homework to do so I made a snack and sat down on the couch to start working. I got home from class and both of my roommates were at the library studying. Second, because I had my first good cry in a long while. First, because I have been sick for what seems like the past year, and have developed a chronic excessive mucus problem. Hopefully I can keep it going in some way, maybe in a real paper journal that I jot some notes in every day. This blog has been fun, it’s cool to look back and see what happened each day for a whole month. When I got home from the interview I did a whole bunch of homework and was super productive and now I’m writing this blog post. But in the end I made it and only had a little bit of trouble finding the actual building (it was tucked in behind like 12 other buildings that looked just like it). I suck at taking the bus, I can never get the timing right, and it just stresses me out in general. When I got home I had to scramble to get all of my stuff together to catch the bus to the office building. I got home at 2:00 and went to Target and got all of my groceries for this week. I was fairly productive in both of my classes. In addition to being great, today felt super long. I was so grateful that he had time to meet with me so last minute and on top of all the cool info I got, I get to do my paper without being a total fraud. He does all of the design work for a company that does biological research. I took the bus to my roommate’s dad’s office. I actually did my informational interview. Moreover, this research and source analysis presents a novel departure from the secondary sources cited in this work by illustrating the possible motivations for certain actors, whether state authorities or individuals, to make ideological statements and employ specific types of behaviour.Happy last day of the Consumption Junction blog!! Thus, the core contribution of this dissertation rests in the blending of archival material, secondary sources, and interviews in light of the ideas associated with the concepts of attempted totalitarianism, modernism, individual agency, and selective participation. To substantiate this examination, I have referred to numerous archival sources and interviews with East Germans associated with the Konsum. To this end, the study has drawn attention to the state’s incursion into the mundane aspects of everyday life in the realms of education, work, and consumption. In other words, the Konsum became a junction between the citizenry and the state. In examining the SED’s ability to use the Konsum to infuse ideology into everyday life, this study provides new understandings of the ways in which the party’s actions affected its citizens, and the ways in which citizens responded to, averted, and manipulated the SED’s politicization of their daily lives. The aim of this dissertation is to augment the historiography of the Soviet Occupation Zone (Sowjetische Besatzungszone, SBZ – 1945 to 1949) and the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR – 1949 to 1990) by examining the ways in which the Konsum contributed to the highly modern and totalitarian aspirations of the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED – 1946 to 1990). It explores the roles of this organization, while alluding to the nature of power relations, Soviet-style socialism, and the tensions between the progressive discourse and the totalitarian elements of socialism in East Germany. This dissertation is the first in-depth English study of East Germany’s Union of the Consumer Co-operatives (Konsum).
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