The war left one section of the country rich. Western Europe, and parts of East Asia, saw between-country. At the close of the war plutocracy was not so all-powerful as it is to-day, but the growth has been rapid. Historic examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/. Presenting a case of a material environment created by a plutocrat in Senec (near Bratislava, Slovakia) I shall attempt to approach an understanding of the motivations, intentions, fears and desires of this recently born elite. same political order that saw inequality plummet in the wealthy countries of North America. 1 This is a particularly difficult question to answer, as China, more than many other countries, has evolved in an atypical way, both when it was a totalitarian. The growing gap between the most affluent Americans and the rest of society is changing the country into one definedmore than almost any other developed nation. Looking at their dress-codes and jewelry, registering their objects of daily use and furnishing, potential (art)collections, architecture (including interior and garden architecture) as well as means of transport I intend to map the plutocrats' subjectivities. In my paper I shall concentrate on subject - object relationships of my informants with their possessions, which are so evidently displayed by the newly rich of post-socialist countries. Can this demonstration of 'tasteless and obscene' overabundance be understood as a break with the socialist past, the ideology of equality? Can it be read as a sign for a new social order with an orientation towards the consumption absorbed West? The newly rich demonstrate to the world how rich they have become, but there is more to their message that uses 'things' as a vehicle. The plutocrats' provocative demonstration of their wealth may be stigmatized as "uncultivated", but it is their cultural idiosyncrasy that my research is focused on. That pecuniary elite is despised by the "old aristocracy", the cultural elite, as well as by the newly poor. These changes have given rise to a new stratum of nouveaux riches, who managed to acquire wealth due to restitution and privatization of former state properties. Before the equal voting rights movement managed to end it in the early 20th century, many countries used a system where rich persons had more votes than poor. The fall of the Iron Curtain has resulted in political and economic changes in all ex-socialist countries. Despite of the stigmatization of these nouveaux riches as boisterous, tasteless and anomic this paper tries to shed light on the relation of the suddenly wealthy owners with their material belongings and investigates the function of the objects as projection screens for complex ideas and emotions. Historic examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian merchant city states of Venice, Florence, Genoa, the Dutch Republic and the pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu ). In Bratislava a stratum of new plutocrats demonstrates pecuniary wealth with hyperbolic evidence.
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