The concept of nostalgy presents significant challenge for transdisciplinary approach including sociology, political anthropology, or cultural studies. (N)ostalgy in different forms is present in all post-Communist countries and the comparative analysis presents promising tool for strengthening of understanding and scientific framing of this phaenomenon. In different national environments we can observe rather dispersed knowledge about the phaenomenon. Next to the most developed and most transdisciplinary (East)German case we may mention the coverage of “Yugo-nostalgia” from cultural, political as well as economic perspective, the historical sociology that dominates in Czech scientific discourse, or dominating literary reflection in post-Soviet space.
The contributors focus on the multifaceted phaenomenon of (n)ostalgy from different perspectives related with the differences in identity conceptions (imagined communities). Their theoretical background lies in social constructivism, more specifically in the speech acts theory and its philosophical and linguistic background. While political science focuses mostly on the political manifestations of (n)ostalgy such as electoral results or selection of political issues, the transdisciplinary approach including the collective psychology might lead to more comprehensive and credible results.
The research is part of PhD-Thesis preparation and the contributors are PhD students and his thesis tutor. As far as we do not have available primarily data, yet (they will be collected in the years 2022 and 2022 in semi-structured interviews), we would like to present and discuss mainly the research design and theoretical concepts.