I struggled with this book. I am trying to say, in the most restrained way possible, that I found it very difficult, and at times maddening. It’s hard to tell if this was because this text is so outside the oeuvre of anthropological writing that I spend most of my time staring at, or because my familiarity with political economy theory is scant at best.
Derluguian’s clearly stated objective, to disprove that ethnic violence in post-socialist Soviet nations was the result of globalization (73), and to investigate what the conditions were that led to the fierce emergence of cultural nations, is a very interesting one. This relates I think, to an emerging theme in this course; one of CONTINGENCIES, and the conditions that work not in a necessarily causal relationship, but a (partially) connective way. There is something so salient and beautiful in the following line: “China after all, is not Russia, and Russia is not exactly like Brazil, or Turkey, or South Africa. But looking from a certain angle, we may discover striking and possibly informative similarities. The source of light that makes these similarities visible and meaningful is social theory.” (288)
Disappointingly, it seems as if Derluguian never really gets around to addressing the question of ethnic violence, head on. He spells out his “narrative” structure, his goal is to use the life and political transformations of Yuri Shanibov/Musa Shanib as a framework for these larger cultural fields. Yet in the end, Shanib feels ancillary, and arbitrary, sometimes disappearing for 50 pages at a time, or as Yoni says, for 15 years.
The threads of Bourdieu, Shanib, and Wallerstein never really mesh in a satisfactory way, and I felt lost in a decontextualized polemic about world-systems theory. I wish there had been more explication of his method, instead of an explicit outlining of his methodology—for instance, Derluguian never explains how he is using habitus, and his working concept is not one familiar to the general social scientist. He pushes habitus in interesting directions, but takes for granted that the reader can make the leap from socialized subjectivities to “rowdy habitus” or “administrative habitus.”
I would be infinitely interested in Yurchak’s reaction to Derluguian’s definitive conclusion—that in the end, it was the middle-managing nomenklatura that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as his assertion that autonomous agency is only achievable through dissent.
Like others have said, I read this book with my eyes wide open looking for Derluguian's ethnographic and analytical "toolkit" and was poised to see how and if I could imagine using this text as a model or inspiration for future work. By the end, I was a little unclear if it was Derluguian's aim to create a biography of the world system (or the Soviet system) or to create a world-system biography of the nomenklatura (Shabinov). That is, I wasn't entirely clear who the subject was at the end of the book. Was it the late Soviet system or was it nomenklatura? Perhaps this is something we can discuss in class.
I certainly learned different things about the Soviet Union as compared with Yurchak's book, although both focused on educated city-folk. Derluguian mentions the sub-proleteriat, but in essence says that their "rowdy habitus" only mattered was when the larger political system provided opportunities for it to matter. Interestingly, although Derluguian tackles Soviet history with a wider lens than Yurchak, he doesn't spend much time on the economic conditions that also substantially contributed to the USSR's "spectacular" demise. He describes the USSR as "developmentalist" and he tells us about the important role of military-industrialization, patronage networks, bribes, and the shadow economy. But for a book that is focused on world-systems, I think a more detailed discussion of the how the central government became so dependent on foreign loans and how it went bankrupt is warranted.
Derluguian also does not adequately discuss how the poverty of the sub-proleteriat played a role in their uprisings and ethnic tensions. There were shortages of bread in the USSR--people were hungry, even in the cities. According to Derluguian, the nomenklatura clung to any ideology they could find to help them survive in their status. What would the proleteriat and sub-proleteriat turn to when they need to actually survive?
4 Comments:
At 5:14 PM,
amber said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
At 5:24 PM,
amber said…
I struggled with this book. I am trying to say, in the most restrained way possible, that I found it very difficult, and at times maddening. It’s hard to tell if this was because this text is so outside the oeuvre of anthropological writing that I spend most of my time staring at, or because my familiarity with political economy theory is scant at best.
Derluguian’s clearly stated objective, to disprove that ethnic violence in post-socialist Soviet nations was the result of globalization (73), and to investigate what the conditions were that led to the fierce emergence of cultural nations, is a very interesting one. This relates I think, to an emerging theme in this course; one of CONTINGENCIES, and the conditions that work not in a necessarily causal relationship, but a (partially) connective way. There is something so salient and beautiful in the following line: “China after all, is not Russia, and Russia is not exactly like Brazil, or Turkey, or South Africa. But looking from a certain angle, we may discover striking and possibly informative similarities. The source of light that makes these similarities visible and meaningful is social theory.” (288)
Disappointingly, it seems as if Derluguian never really gets around to addressing the question of ethnic violence, head on. He spells out his “narrative” structure, his goal is to use the life and political transformations of Yuri Shanibov/Musa Shanib as a framework for these larger cultural fields. Yet in the end, Shanib feels ancillary, and arbitrary, sometimes disappearing for 50 pages at a time, or as Yoni says, for 15 years.
The threads of Bourdieu, Shanib, and Wallerstein never really mesh in a satisfactory way, and I felt lost in a decontextualized polemic about world-systems theory. I wish there had been more explication of his method, instead of an explicit outlining of his methodology—for instance, Derluguian never explains how he is using habitus, and his working concept is not one familiar to the general social scientist. He pushes habitus in interesting directions, but takes for granted that the reader can make the leap from socialized subjectivities to “rowdy habitus” or “administrative habitus.”
I would be infinitely interested in Yurchak’s reaction to Derluguian’s definitive conclusion—that in the end, it was the middle-managing nomenklatura that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as his assertion that autonomous agency is only achievable through dissent.
At 7:57 PM,
Kadija Ferryman said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
At 7:59 PM,
Kadija Ferryman said…
Like others have said, I read this book with my eyes wide open looking for Derluguian's ethnographic and analytical "toolkit" and was poised to see how and if I could imagine using this text as a model or inspiration for future work. By the end, I was a little unclear if it was Derluguian's aim to create a biography of the world system (or the Soviet system) or to create a world-system biography of the nomenklatura (Shabinov). That is, I wasn't entirely clear who the subject was at the end of the book. Was it the late Soviet system or was it nomenklatura? Perhaps this is something we can discuss in class.
I certainly learned different things about the Soviet Union as compared with Yurchak's book, although both focused on educated city-folk. Derluguian mentions the sub-proleteriat, but in essence says that their "rowdy habitus" only mattered was when the larger political system provided opportunities for it to matter. Interestingly, although Derluguian tackles Soviet history with a wider lens than Yurchak, he doesn't spend much time on the economic conditions that also substantially contributed to the USSR's "spectacular" demise. He describes the USSR as "developmentalist" and he tells us about the important role of military-industrialization, patronage networks, bribes, and the shadow economy. But for a book that is focused on world-systems, I think a more detailed discussion of the how the central government became so dependent on foreign loans and how it went bankrupt is warranted.
Derluguian also does not adequately discuss how the poverty of the sub-proleteriat played a role in their uprisings and ethnic tensions. There were shortages of bread in the USSR--people were hungry, even in the cities. According to Derluguian, the nomenklatura clung to any ideology they could find to help them survive in their status. What would the proleteriat and sub-proleteriat turn to when they need to actually survive?
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