Tag: research

Applying creative ethnography in the study of deindustrialising neighbourhoods

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

I wrote a new blog post on creative ethnography in the study of everyday life in deindustrialising urban settings for SAGE Perspectives. It is based on my recent research article examining structures of feeling in Russia’s industrial neighbourhoods. You can read a full version of this blog here, if you are interested in knowing more about how to apply drawing and visual research methods in multi-sited ethnography .

Deindustrialisation is a global complex process. It leads not only to the closure of factories which would otherwise damage the environment but also negatively affects everyday life and job opportunities of working-class people. Deindustrialisation often goes hand in hand with neoliberal urban development resulting in gentrification and displacement of longstanding residents of former industrial neighbourhoods and council estates.  

Due to the multiple impacts of deindustrialisation on the lived experiences of local communities, it is important to develop multi-sensory approaches and innovative methodologies relevant for researching place attachment, sensual experiences and urban imaginaries of people residing in post-industrial urban areas.

Illustration by Alexandrina Vanke based on ethnographic data from her research

In my study of two industrial neighbourhoods with mixed social compositions in the cities of Moscow and Yekaterinburg, Russia, I drew on the approach of multi-sited ethnography. Its research design built on a combination of the mainstream qualitative methods of interviewing, observation, participation and the creative method of drawing of the neighbourhoods studied made by research participants, also known as a mental mapping technique.

A mental map is a visualisation of the subjective perception of urban space by city dwellers. Kevin Lynch applied mental mapping in his study of the city images in the US. According to Lynch, each image of the city composed by many individual images, which share some similar visual patterns. In my research on Russia’s industrial neighbourhoods, I used mental mapping to explore structures of feeling as affective principles regulating sensual experiences, urban imaginaries and practical activities of local communities. Mental mapping was aimed to elicit how members of those communities sense and imagine their urban areas.

Continue reading in the SAGE Perspectives Blog.

Research article on structure of feeling

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

My new article Co-existing structures of feeling: Senses and imaginaries of industrial neighbourhoods is out in The Sociological Review. This post summarises its key points. This is a first publication from my doctoral project exploring working-class life and struggle in post-Soviet Russia, which I completed at the University of Manchester in 2021.

tsr-7026773185022708375-71-1-january-2023

In the article, I provide an empirically grounded theorisation of the concept of structure of feeling introduced by sociologist Raymond Williams. Williams defined structure of feeling differently in his works. According to one of his definitions, structure of feeling can be viewed as ‘the spirit of the age’ reflecting the collective cultural feelings of a period or an era. Williams’s another understanding of structure of feeling is related to the lived experiences of working-class communities which have a particular way of life.

While Williams applied structures of feeling mainly in regard to English literature and film, I suggest bringing this concept in sociology of space and place and urban anthropology. In the article, I extend structure of feeling, drawing on my multi-sited ethnography in two industrial neighbourhoods located in the cities of Moscow and Yekaterinburg, Russia.

I conceptualise structure of feeling by focusing on its affective mechanisms regulating senses, imaginaries and practical activities of residents of the two neighbourhoods studied. This ethnographic conceptualisation of structure of feeling allows me to explain better everyday life and local atmospheres in the urban areas undergoing deindustrialisation. The article answers the question of how working-class and longstanding middle-class residents sense and imagine their neighbourhoods.

The article builds on rich multi-sensory data derived from my PhD project: 50 interview transcripts, more than 150 pages of field notes, more than 550 photographs and 43 drawings of the industrial neighbourhoods made by research participants. I show how to apply multi-sited ethnography in the study of the lived experiences of local communities in two locations. I also explain how to use a method of drawing, also known as a mental mapping technique, in research on structures of feeling and deindustrialisation.

© The image by artist Polina Nikitina based on my ethnographic data

My research has revealed that working-class and longstanding middle-class residents show an affective attachment to place informed by an industrial residual structure of feeling. An industrial structure of feeling comprises values of factory culture, communality and shared space, while an emergent structure of feeling is informed by values of neoliberal development, individual comfort and private space. Both neighbourhoods studied have its particular local atmosphere driven by complicated relationships between socialist/ Soviet / industrial and post-socialist/ post-Soviet/ post-industrial structures of feeling. That is why, I suggest understanding structure of feeling not as a spirit of the time but as a multiple spirit of the time and place.

I develop further this theorisation in my book The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia: Engaging in everyday struggle to be published by Manchester University Press. Focusing on the issue of inequality, the book provides a novel account of urban life in post-industrial cities. One of its empirical chapters is partly based on this article.

You can find the article OnlineFirst on the website of The Sociological Review.

If you find the information from this post helpful and decide to use it in your publications, please cite:

Vanke, A. (2023). Co-existing structures of feeling: Senses and imaginaries of industrial neighbourhoods. The Sociological Review, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221149540

The publications digest

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

There were no posts in this blog for ten months for some objective reasons. I am currently writing the book The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia to be published by Manchester University Press.  

In 2022, I had some publications, which came out but were not covered in the blog. This post presents the digest of those and forthcoming publications.

1. Together with Andrea Lizama and Denisse Sepúlveda, I co-edited a special section on social mobility and inequality issued in Sociological Research Online.

Cite article: Lizama-Loyola, A., Sepúlveda, D., & Vanke, A. (2022). Making Sense of Social Mobility in Unequal Societies. Sociological Research Online, 27(1), 95–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211066120

The special section takes a global perspective on different aspects of subjective social mobility and inequality. It includes six contributions covering the themes of political debate about social mobility in the UK and collective social mobility of working-class communities in Wales, intersectional inequality experienced by British-born Bengali Muslim women of working-class origin and educational mobility of people from different social backgrounds in Chile, social mobility of rural students in China and Chilean people’s experiences of long-range upward mobility shaped by meritocratic narratives.

Continue reading “The publications digest” →

The Last Stretch to the PhD during the COVID-19 Pandemic

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

From November 23, Greater Manchester moved to the local COVID alert level 3 due to the increased infection rate. This information reached me via e-mail as part of the news feed from the University of Manchester, where I am doing my PhD in Sociology. What does it mean for students? We cannot socialise with people from other households in public places. We can neither accept guests at home and in private gardens nor visit other people at their home. But in fact, it means that if you are an international student, you are very likely to continue living in isolation. If you would like to meet friends in person, the only option for you is to walk with them in the park social distancing. Although the rainy Mancunian weather does not permit this much. If you do not want to break the rules, you can merely hang out remotely.

In such a context, I am entering the last stretch to the PhD, which is the most difficult one, as my local friend with a doctoral degree says. In this post, I reflect some challenges, which I face at the final stage of the thesis writing under the local lockdown in Manchester. I explain how I attempt to meet these challenges.

The lack of proper rest

One of the problems, which PhD students with funding face, is that the studentship will run out one day. In my view, it is better to complete your thesis by that moment or at least not shortly afterwards. I know some people will disagree with me saying that it is better to spend more time in the PhD to build a solid CV and improve a publication record.

Well, it depends on your life situation, personal goals and your programme. For example, anthropologists spend at least one year in the field, and it takes more time for them to complete a PhD. It also depends on what academic profile you already have and at what stage of your professional path you are. Bearing this in mind, I worked hard throughout the whole summer and autumn trying to improve the chapters, which I drafted during my third year.

Another problem at this stage is that you need to start applying for jobs or/and elaborate your postdoctoral project if your goal is to continue working in academia. Apart from this, you may need to write some other texts, for example, journal articles, and do a side job in teaching, research or somewhere else. As for me, I entirely focused on improving the thesis draft and preparing an application for the postdoctoral fellowship. I also applied for several jobs. The purpose of this activity was to understand what was happening with the academic labour market during the pandemic and gain experience in applying for positions of different types.

As a result, I did not have enough time for proper rest and sufficient breaks.

Possible solutions

  • Under the local lockdown, you do not have many opportunities to take proper rest. For me, sunbathing on the lawn with the neighbours in summer and regular walks in the park in autumn was the best solution to this problem. It helped me to keep my mind off the work and the laptop screen. I enjoyed walking, observing squirrels, greeting people accurately social distancing, and breathing in the smell of trees in the park. However, it will be more difficult to make in late autumn.
  • Sometimes, I visited a neighbourhood café with a garden, where I enjoyed chatting with a barista, drinking coffee or having lunch in the open air. I know that some students save money and prefer eating at home. I can do nothing with this habit. It cheers me up and increases my productivity. If you find it problematic to go out in the lockdown, you can make a proper meal for yourself and have it watching a good movie.© Photo by the author

Continue reading “The Last Stretch to the PhD during the COVID-19 Pandemic” →

Как собрать данные в полевом качественном исследовании / How to Collect Data in Qualitative Field Research

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

Копия Как собрать данные_обл_13 мм (1)_page-0001Наше учебное пособие в соавторстве с Елизаветой Полухиной и Анной Стрельниковой “Как собрать данные в полевом качественном исследовании” вышло в Издательском доме Высшей школы экономики. Пособие содержит информацию о качественных методах сбора эмпирических данных, которые мы применяли в наших совместных проектах последних лет. Книга приглашает читателя к размышлению о методологическом инструментарии и вносит вклад в дискуссию о том, как исследователи могут решать методические проблемы, возникающие в ходе полевой работы.

Ссылка: А. В. Ваньке, Е. В. Полухина, А. В. Стрельникова. Как собрать данные в полевом качественном исследовании. М.: Изд. дом Высшей школы экономики, 2020.

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Our handbook in co-authorship with Elizaveta Polukhina and Anna Strelnikova ‘How to collect data in qualitative field research’ has been published by The Higher School of Economics Publishing House. The handbook provides information about qualitative methods of data collection that we applied in our team projects in recent years. The book invites the reader to reflect on methodological tools and contributes to the debate on how researchers can solve some methods issues emerging during fieldwork.

You can download Chapter 1 (in Russian) by following the link: Designing Qualitative Field Research.

Reference: Vanke, A., Polukhina, E., Strelnikova, A. (2020). Kak sobrat’ dannye v polevom kachestvennom issledovanii [How To Collect Data in Qualitative Field Research]. Moscow: The Higher School of Economics Publishing House. (In Russian).

2nd year of the PhD: facing new challenges

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

Some people say that the 2nd year is the most exciting and easiest stage of the full PhD process. On the one hand, I agree with this, because at this point you know what you should do exactly and it is still far to write the whole thesis. On the other hand, each PGR student has its own path depending on her/his research project, so you never know what challenges may arise at this stage. During my 2nd year of the PhD in Sociology at the University of Manchester, I completed fieldwork, analyzed most of the empirical data, and gained teaching experience. I decided not to make these things all together and spent several months for each of these activities separately.

Teaching

In September 2018, I came back to Manchester from the 2nd field trip to Russia and as a teaching assistant joined two courses, Media, Culture & Society and Researching Culture & Society, given at the University of Manchester. Before the PhD I had already taught in Moscow Universities. However, as far as British and Russian systems of higher education differ, there was something new for me to learn. New teaching assistants have to take introductory courses explaining, for example, how to protect confidential information about students, how to solve a problem of cultural diversity in the classroom, how to assess students’ records and give feedback, etc. Only after the completion of these introductory courses you are allowed to start teaching.

IMG_2772The Whitworth Building of the University of Manchester. Photo by Alexandrina Vanke

From October to December 2018, I gave seminars (called tutorials at the University of Manchester) in four groups, in two for each of the course. There were approx. 10 students in each group. It took me two-three days of preparation, and one day of teaching. Normally teaching assistants should read the required and additional literature for tutorials (up to 10 positions for one tutorial) and facilitate a discussion in the classroom. Lecturers prepare questions for the discussion beforehand. You may be creative and add something else but a seminar has already a structure though. The things you are required to do is to help students to get answers to the questions based on the reading and support them in critical debating the issues formulated by the lecturer.

By the mid-autumn, each student had to submit a written work on one of the topics proposed by the lecturer and based on the recommended reading. For me, the assessment of students’ essays was the most time-consuming part of teaching. It was absolutely different from the assessment process I used to do in Russian Unis. At the University of Manchester, you should estimate an essay on a 100-point scale and explain in detail (i.e. to write feedback), why you gave a particular mark to a student. In addition, you should assess different elements of each essay on a 10-point scale, e.g. creativity, methodology, originality, critical reflection, arguments, etc.

IMG_2780.JPGThe campus of the University of Manchester. Photo by Alexandrina Vanke

At the time of teaching, I spent one-two days in the working week for my PhD research and sometimes weekends. In spite of new challenges, it was really great for me to change the activity: to switch from fieldwork to teaching. In addition, I got to know some new approaches from the course Media, Culture & Society, which I may use in PhD, and broadened knowledge in qualitative research methods thanks to the course Researching Culture & Society. At the beginning of December 2018, I went to Boston to present PhD research at the Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. After coming back to Manchester I gave the final class and in the next couple of days headed to Moscow to undertake the final phase of fieldwork.

Fieldwork

The research design of my PhD project ‘Working-class life and struggle in post-Soviet Russia’ is based on the approach of multi-sited ethnography and involved collecting ethnographic data in two localities. Fieldwork took place in two field sites and was split into three phases. By the end of the 1st year of the PhD (read more: here), I had two field trips to Yekaterinburg and Moscow and collected most of the empirical data in two industrial neighbourhoods located in these two cities. After the 2nd field trip, I formulated some new suggestions, which needed to be supported by additional empirical data.

To check the provisional arguments, I decided to undertake the 3rd phase of fieldwork in Moscow between December 2018 and January 2019. During this final field trip, I came back to the examined Moscow neighbourhood and conducted some more interviews with its residents. However, this phase aimed at researching the experiences of workers who took part in trade union activity. As far as this winter field trip coincided with long New Year celebrations in Russia, it was quite problematic to arrange meetings with potential participants. If people agreed for the interviews, our talks were long and occurred in a warm and relaxing atmosphere, sometimes over tea at the participant’s place.

Sociology PGR Colloquium

An announcement of my presentation at the colloquium. Made by Francisca Ortiz Ruiz

In February 2019, I finished collecting data and came back to Manchester being ready to move onto the next stage of data analysis. Finally, my database consisted of 53 ethnographic interviews, 155 pages of field notes, more than 550 photographs and other visual data. I was invited to present the PhD project at the PGR colloquium organized by my peers from Sociology. The process of preparation for the colloquium allowed me to build a more or less coherent visual narrative with sociological ethnography and to see that I had enough empirics for putting a puzzle together.

Data analysis

The spring semester of the 2nd year was fully dedicated to work with empirical data. First of all, interview transcripts needed anonymization and creation of an anonymization log with records about places data, which was removed or replaced by pseudonyms. I changed the names of research participants, and the names of their relatives and friends mentioned in interviews, the names of neighbourhoods, streets, and other recognizable spots, numbers of schools and house buildings, etc.

IMG_5238.JPGMy desk in the office of the Department of Sociology. Photo by Alexandrina Vanke

At the next stage, from March to July 2019, I coded all anonymized interview transcripts in NVivo 12 software. Before coding my supervisors advised me to choose three absolutely different interviews from the data set – I chose one interview from each of three fieldwork phases – and to create the initial codes, which changed slightly in the following process of coding. At the beginning, the codes looked a bit unstructured, but later I restructured them and generated child codes related to the key categories. On the one hand, the process of coding was routine and monotonous. On the other hand, coding in NVivo helped me to structure ethnographic data and create a detailed hierarchy of codes, which consists of more than 670 items now.

I generated some codes ‘bottom-up’ from empirical data and some codes ‘top-down’ by keeping in mind theory. Now it is clear that coding in NVivo was the first step toward bridging empirical data with theory, theory with empirical data in my PhD research. Emotions were also there. While rereading interviews, I was sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing. Well, the everyday life of workers in Russia is really hard, but there is also a place for humour and resilience.

IMG_5698Presenting PhD research at the BSA conference. Photo by Francisca Ortiz Ruiz

In April I presented the intermediated results of data analysis at the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association which took place in Glasgow. May and June were fully spent on preparing a field report and other research documents for the annual review. In the field report, I tried to write a sociological ethnography – which was not easy for me – and figured out how the empirical chapters of the thesis may look like. At the end of the 2nd year of the PhD I presented the field report at the annual review. The reviewer gave me insightful feedback on empirical research and helpful advice on the theoretical framework. Inspired by the stimulating discussion at the annual review, I am looking forward to moving onto the next stage and starting writing the thesis.

Публикации 2018

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

В 2018 году вышли следующие мои статьи, посвященные исследованиям маскулинной телесности и территориальной идентичности в индустриальных районах.

Ваньке, Александрина (2018). Мужские тела, сексуальности и субъективности, Философско-литературный журнал Логос 28(4), сс. 85-108.

fresh-topleft.jpgАннотация. Углубление социального неравенства, которое автор связывает с глобальным распространением неолиберализма, усложняет систему властных отношений между мужскими телами и сексуальностями и ведет к дифференциации типов маскулинности. На материале 43 биографических интервью переосмысляются властные отношения внутри двух социально-профессиональных сред — так называемых синих и белых воротничков. Автор приходит к выводу, что через регулирование телесности сфера труда управляет эмоциональными отношениями и, как следствие, сексуальной жизнью мужчин из обеих групп. Наряду с этим режимы производственного и офисного труда генерируют разные логики управления мужской телесностью, которые воспроизводятся в приватной сфере и используются для создания мужской субъективности.

Основным ресурсом конституирования мужественности для рабочих служат физическая сила и умения, тогда как для офисных клерков — телесная репрезентация и перформанс. Следствием дифференциации в структуре труда становится неравенство возможностей создать «успешный» маскулинный субъект. Мужчины-рабочие называют себя «неудачниками», в то время как служащие считают себя «состоятельными», хотя и те и другие в равной степени выступают объектами эксплуатации. Телесный труд рабочего отчуждается в процессе управления телами на производстве, тогда как тело офисного клерка коммодифицируется и превращается в знак в системе символического обмена. Вместе с тем результаты исследования свидетельствуют о размывании средовых границ и ослаблении классового сознания, что позволяет мужчинам — рабочим и офисным служащим — применять сходные сексуальные стратегии, различающиеся лишь по форме и стилю. Маскулинная субъективность синих и белых воротничков включает одни и те же компоненты традиционной, либеральной и новой мужественности, которые отличаются по способам и формам выражения.

Ключевые слова:  мужчины; тело; сексуальность; синие воротнички; белые воротнички; труд; власть; эмоции; неравенство.

 

Ваньке, Александрина и Елизавета, Полухина (2018). Территориальная идентичность в индустриальных районах: культурные практики заводских рабочих и деятелей современного искусства, Laboratorium Журнал социальных исследований 10(3), сс. 4-34.

cover_issue_31_en_USАннотация. В статье рассматриваются территориальные идентичности, сформировавшиеся вокруг советских предприятий: завода имени И. А. Лихачева (ЗИЛ) в Москве и Уральского завода тяжелого машиностроения (Уралмаш) в Екатеринбурге. На примере двух кейсов авторы отвечают на вопрос о том, как создается территориальная идентичность индустриальных районов в постсоветской России. Авторы анализируют культурные практики в двух индустриальных районах и показывают, какой вклад в изменение их территориальных идентичностей вносят культурные акторы: представители творческих профессий и культурной среды, то есть научные работники, художники, архитекторы, фотографы, преподаватели высших учебных заведений, работники музеев, культурные и городские активисты. Исследование обнаруживает увеличение социального неравенства между резидентами индустриальных районов: рабочими и представителями других социальных групп. На фоне неолиберальной политики новые социальные акторы приходят в индустриальные районы, изменяя конфигурацию их социального состава. Оба кейса – территории вокруг завода имени И. А. Лихачёва и Уралмашзавода – демонстрируют наслоение разных типов идентичности и ассоциирующихся с ними культур рабочего и среднего классов. Так, в случае индустриальных районов мы можем говорить о множественной территориальной идентичности, которая выражается в том, что коренные жители и новые культурные акторы применяют классово дифференцированные «советские» и «постсоветские» культурные практики, воспроизводят «старые» и «новые» стили жизни.

Роль культурных акторов в формировании множественной территориальной идентичности индустриальных районов амбивалентна. С одной стороны, они вносят вклад в создание новой культурной среды и ведут работу по снятию маргинальных маркеров с промышленных территорий, делая эти районы более привлекательными для общегородских публик. С другой стороны, в процессе культурной экспансии резиденты индустриальных районов становятся «невидимой» социальной группой, лишенной возможности говорить публично. Культура рабочих, выражающаяся в практиках культурного потребления, сформировавшихся в советский период (например, посещение театров, музеев, домов культуры) и ремесленных навыках (например, вышивание, вязание, пошив одежды для женщин, а для мужчин создание предметов быта своими руками), обесценивается и не воспринимается как достойная внимания. Таким образом, деятельность культурных акторов вписана в общий тренд джентрификации и вытеснения рабочих за пределы промышленных территорий и публичного пространства. Вышеперечисленные процессы указывают на воспроизводство культурного, классового и территориального неравенств внутри индустриальных районов.

Ключевые слова: территориальная идентичность, индустриальный район, культурные практики, заводские рабочие, культурологический анализ классов

Transformation of Working-Class Identity in Post-Soviet Russia

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

We present the results of our group project The Everyday Life of Industrial Workers: Ethnographic Case-Study of Industrial Neighborhood in Yekaterinburg, conducted by me, Elizaveta Polukhina and Anna Strelnikova, in the working paper The Transformation of Working-Class Identity in Post-Soviet Russia: A Case-Study of an Ural Industrial Neighborhood.

Abstract

This paper presents an analytical description of working-class identity in three key periods of the socioeconomic transformations which changed the structure of a plant’s industry and working-class life: the Soviet era (1930s-1980s), the time of economical change (1990s), and the post-Soviet years (2000s-2010s). The analytical framework of the study is based on the concept of ‘cultural class analysis’ (Savage 2015). It includes the concepts of habitus and cultural capital, and culture as embedded in economic and social relations (Bourdieu 1980).

In the course of the research we conducted an ethnographic case-study in 2017 and lived in the neighborhood of Uralmash, which was designed for workers of a heavy machinery plant dating back to the 1920s in the city of Yekaterinburg. Based on 15 in-depth interviews with Uralmash workers living in the neighborhood and 8 experts, and our field observations, we discovered 3 restructuring shapes of the Uralmash worker identity. These working class identities shapes referred to 3 determined periods. The Soviet period showed a ‘consistent’ working-class identity of the Uralmash workers, whereby the plant and working spirits were the centers of their lives. The 1990s was marked by severe deterioration of workers’ social conditions and the loss of their familiar bearings in life. As a consequence, the Uralmash workers perceived themselves as ‘victims of circumstances’ with ‘collapsing’ worker identity in 1990s. Currently, ‘Soviet’ and ‘post-Soviet’ practices and values are combined in today’s ‘mixing’ and an inconsistent worker identity. The notions of ‘simple’ and ‘working-class’ as sense-making images are encapsulated in nostalgic memories and retain their role as criteria for the delineation between inequalities and social discrimination along the ‘them’ and ‘us’: ‘we are those who live belonging to the past’. The Soviet past still continues to be an important sense-making resource; in fact, it is the only ‘universal’ prop for them that support their subjective perception of themselves.

Keywords: Industrial Neighborhood, Worker, Working-Class Identity, Ethnographic Case-Study

Elizaveta, Polukhina and Strelnikova, Anna and Vanke, Alexandrina, The Transformation of Working-Class Identity in Post-Soviet Russia: A Case-Study of an Ural Industrial Neighborhood (November 22, 2017). Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 77/SOC/2017. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3075749

Masculinities, Bodies and Subjectivities

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

A book Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism. Working-Class Men in International Perspective edited by Charlie Walker and Steven Roberts with my contribution Masculinities, Bodies and Subjectivities: Working-Class Men Negotiating Russia’s Post-Soviet Gender Order has been finally published by Palgrave Mcmillan.

Abstract

This chapter considers the interrelation between masculinities, bodies and subjectivities of Russian working-class men generated by Russia’s post-Soviet gender order. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to large transformations in Russian society that changed its social structure significantly. During the period of transition, some social classes and groups, which had been sustained by the state and respected in Soviet times, were devalued and downshifted. Working-class people, especially men, experienced this downgrade in the greatest measure. Building on the approaches by Michel Foucault and Raewyn Connell, the chapter examines masculine subjectivities constituted through body and sexual practices of working-class men, and it explains the peculiarities of post-Soviet gender order reflecting Russia’s new forms of socioeconomic politics. The author defines several types of working-class masculinity, which are classic masculine subjectivity reproducing patterns of the Soviet gender order and trying to sustain a normative gender model; and new masculine subjectivity combining neoliberal and counter-neoliberal patterns which can be divided into consuming and protest masculinities.

Cite this chapter as: Vanke A. (2018) Masculinities, Bodies and Subjectivities: Working-Class Men Negotiating Russia’s Post-Soviet Gender Order. In: Walker C., Roberts S. (eds) Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Трансформации маскулинности российских рабочих

~ Alexandrina Vanke ~ Leave a comment

В четвертом номере журнала “Мир России” за 2016 год вышла моя статья “Трансформации маскулинности российских рабочих в контексте социальной мобильности”, написанная в соавторстве с Ириной Тартаковской. 

В статье реконструируются маскулинности рабочих в постсоветской России, прослеживается их динамика в соотношении с субъективной социальной мобильностью в 1991–2015 гг. Авторы приходят к выводу, что сегодня в российском обществе сочетаются классические и новые типы мужественности рабочих. Классическая маскулинность рабочих воспроизводит образцы советского гендерного порядка и стремится достигнуть нормативного образца, что оказывается не всегда возможным. Новая маскулинность отличается независимостью, активностью и инициативностью рабочих. В то же время она воспроизводит стратегии нового гендерного порядка, в основе которого лежат ценности индивидуализма, интенсивного потребления и значительных инвестиций в свою внешность. С помощью этих стратегий рабочие стремятся создать свою мужественность и осуществить восходящую субъективную социальную мобильность при ограниченности их объективных условий.

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