The “Two Russias” Culture War: Constructions of the “People” During the 2011-2013 Protests
About: This article is published in South Atlantic Quarterly.The article was published on 2014-01-01. It has received 24 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Culture war.
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the potential that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has in providing an alternative angle of analysis to the Western centrism that still dominates the international media studies landscape.
Abstract: This article explores the potential that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has in providing an alternative angle of analysis to the Western centrism that still dominates the international media studies landscape. BRICS is presented as a heterogeneous group of countries united by a common cause: the struggle for recognition in the face of Western hegemony in the neoliberal global order. As postcolonial studies attribute the existing patterns of asymmetry to the burden of the colonial past, a BRICS perspective focuses on the unipolar neoliberal global order and the manner in which it influences the logic of academic research.
17 citations
Cites background from "The “Two Russias” Culture War: Cons..."
...This problem has been observed in different societies, for instance, in the problem of the “two publics” in Africa, one related to the primordial group to which the individual belongs and the other to the institutions inherited from the colonial administration (Ekeh, 1975); the “two Russias” opposing the Westernized, “cosmopolitan” sector of the society to the “ordinary people” (Matveev, 2014); and the manner of how the mainstream press claims to represent the enlightened public opinion in opposition to the government elected by ordinary people in both Brazil and South Africa (Albuquerque, 2016)....
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...…from the colonial administration (Ekeh, 1975); the “two Russias” opposing the Westernized, “cosmopolitan” sector of the society to the “ordinary people” (Matveev, 2014); and the manner of how the mainstream press claims to represent the enlightened public opinion in opposition to the government…...
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated national identification by applying psychosocial methodology to discourse produced in Russia during the era of "Putinism" (2000-2010) using interviews, surveys and media representations.
Abstract: This thesis investigates national identification by applying psychosocial methodology to
discourses produced in Russia during the era of ‘Putinism’ (2000- ). Existing literature on
post-Soviet Russia frequently claims that at the heart of the nation lies an absence of
symbolic functions or subjective formations with which Russians could identify. At the
same time, there has been relatively little empirical work that seeks to examine national
identification using a psychosocial approach. The study fills this lacuna by looking for
moments of identification across different texts, such as interviews, surveys and media
representations. Using as its starting point the conditions of possibility of post-2000
Russia, the study pays attention to societal shifts and disjunctures, examining how they
are reflected in discursive patterns and formations.
The dissertation’s empirical element consists of two parts. Through the analysis of
interviews and open-ended surveys, the first part documents respondents’ ambivalent
relationship with Russia and Russianness, which is characterized by splitting and
disavowal. In the second part, the study deploys a case study approach. The first case
study focuses on discourses of rejection and (dis)identification as featured in the Russian
public’s responses to Pussy Riot. It concludes that in their policing of Russianness and
the demarcation of features deemed undesirable as embodied by the group, participants
in the debate have found ways of both shifting the threat Pussy Riot represents, and also
of once again ‘enjoying the nation’. The second case study examines discourses that seek
to elicit identification in the populace via representational mechanisms around the figure
of Vladimir Putin. It is argued that the various strategies employed to activate leader love,
ranging from hypermasculinity to hyperrealism, seem to indicate a void at the heart of
the Russian president’s persona and, by extension, his national project, making them
profoundly unstable.
Overall, the thesis provides a rare empirical contribution to the psychosocial study of
national identification. It addresses the interrelation between imaginary and symbolic
identification and the pivotal role of fantasmatic processes therein. The identifications I
locate in the thesis are precarious and fleeting, speaking of the loss of a fantasy of
national greatness, and of an internalization of images and scenes borrowed from
literature and history. The study also offers a consideration of the implications of such
attachments for Russian society, thus providing further illustration of the
interdependence of the psychic and the social.
13 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1959
TL;DR: The sociological imagination is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: C Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives The sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues Leading sociologist Amitai Etzioni brings this fortieth anniversary edition up to date with a lucid introduction in which he considers the ways social analysis has progressed since Mills first published his study in 1959 A classic in the field, this book still provides rich food for our imagination
7,700 citations
5,429 citations
Book•
01 Apr 1985
TL;DR: The authors traces the genealogy of the present crisis in left-wing thought, from stifling of democracy under Marxist-Lenninism and Stalinism to the contemporary emergence of new forms of struggle and reexamines the idea of hegemony, from the formation of the idea in the writings of Lenin and Gramsci, to the expanded and discursive ideas of Foucault to posit a claim for the new possibilities of a radical democracy.
Abstract: This book traces the genealogy of the present crisis in left-wing thought, from stifling of democracy under Marxist-Lenninism and Stalinism to the contemporary emergence of new forms of struggle; and reexamines the idea of hegemony, from the formation of the idea in the writings of Lenin and Gramsci, to the expanded and discursive ideas of Foucault to posit a claim for the new possibilities of a radical democracy. This is a text for both the understanding of hegemony and for focusing on present social struggles and their significance for democratic theory.
4,968 citations
1,860 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1951
TL;DR: White Collar by C. Wright Mills as discussed by the authors is considered a standard on the subject of the new middle class in twentieth-century America and demonstrates how the conditions and styles of middle class life-originating from elements of both the newer lower and upper classes-represent modern society as a whole.
Abstract: In print for fifty years, White Collar by C. Wright Mills is considered a standard on the subject of the new middle class in twentieth-century America. This landmark volume demonstrates how the conditions and styles of middle class life-originating from elements of both the newer lower and upper classes-represent modern society as a whole. By examining white-collar life, Mills aimed to learn something about what was becoming more typically "American" than the once-famous Western frontier character. He painted a picture instead of a society that had evolved into a business-based milieu, viewing America instead as a great salesroom, an enormous file, and a new universe of management. Russell Jacoby, author of The End of Utopia and The Last Intellectuals, contributes a new Afterword to this edition, in which he reflects on the impact White Collar had at its original publication and considers what it means to our society today. "A book that persons of every level of the white collar pyramid should read and ponder. It will alert them to their condition for their better salvation."-Horace M. Kaellen, The New York Times (on the first edition)
979 citations