Global Villages

The first book in a decade to look in-depth at transformations in contemporary Bulgaria, tackling the neglected issue of globalization in rural contexts.

‘Global Villages: Rural and Urban Transformations in Contemporary Bulgaria’ aims to broaden the study of globalization from urban to rural contexts, exploring its effects through case studies from postsocialist Bulgaria. 

This book explores the multiple effects of globalization on urban and rural communities, providing anthropological case studies from postsocialist Bulgaria. As globalization has been studied largely in urban contexts, the aim of this volume is to shift attention to the under-examined countryside and analyse how transnational links are transforming relations between cities, towns and villages. The volume also challenges undifferentiated notions of ‘the countryside’, calling for an awareness of rural economic and social disparities which are often only associated with urban environments. The work focuses on how the ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ have been reconfigured following the end of socialism and the advent of globalization, in socioeconomic, as well as political, ideological and cultural terms.