Laboratorium. 2011. Vol. 3, no. 1:217–220

The Russian Field: Views from Abroad. Introduction

Elena Bogdanova, Mischa Gabowitsch

Introduction to a thematic issue on ethnographic approaches to contemporary Russia by foreign researchers from a variety of fields. The issue is based on a conference held in Saint Petersburg in 2009, itself modeled after a similar conference in Germany ten years earlier. Integrating the foreign gaze into one’s own self-image is a straightforwardly useful exercise for social scientists from Germany and Western countries that have a history of colonial or hegemonic control over countries from the Global South. In Russia, whose self-image was shaped by foreign observers from the beginnings of academic study, the experiment is more complicated. Nevertheless, foreign ethnographers can contribute useful insights qua foreigners. However, Russia’s alterity, obvious to an older generation of Westerners visiting the Soviet Union, is no longer a matter of course for their younger colleagues with more transnational biographies.

A Multi-lectic Anatomy of Stiob and Poshlost’: 
Case Studies in the Oeuvre of Timur Novikov

Ivor Stodolsky

The article introduces a new method for the empirical analysis of cultural phenomena, called multi-lectic anatomy. It is applied to two key culture-political “art actions” by Leningrad/Saint Petersburg artist Timur Novikov (1958–2002), who gained fame through a wide range of symbolic conceits, creating assumed satirical intentions, cynical denials, kynic hoaxes, and spoofs. The article models actual audiences’ differing judgments of Novikov’s performances. The case studies introduce the formal vocabulary of multi-lectic anatomy, expand Alexei Yurchak’s well-known discussion of stiob and the performative shift, and adapt the Russian concept of poshlost’ to discuss perceptions of moral and aesthetic bad faith. Many observers took delight in Novikov’s postmodern games and paradoxes. The article describes these as elaborate cultural expressions of a banal vacuum of values, and raises questions concerning the wider historical significance of Novikov’s supposedly dangerous artistic strategies.

Russian State and Civil Society in Interaction: 
An Ethnographic Approach

Meri Kulmala

Interaction between civil society organizations and the state in Russia is analyzed on the basis of fieldwork in the Sortavala district in Karelia. The liberal and statist models wrongly assume that civil society and the state are distinct and opposing entities; this study shows that in practice they overlap and intersect. The often-made distinction between policy-advocacy and service-provision organizations is overly reductionist, since one organization can perform both functions. The cases discussed are a Municipal Social Service Center that bundles public and civic efforts; an independent child protection organization that actively collaborates with the authorities; and a network of women’s organizations that has successfully proposed regional policy initiatives. The article presents a case for studying state-civil society relations in Russia ethnographically and at the local and regional level.

The Power of Dress in Contemporary Russian Society: On Glamour Discourse and the Everyday Practice of Getting Dressed in Russian Cities

Katharina Klingseis

Robert Pfaller has argued that glamour has declined in the public space of Western societies in response to calls for more authenticity voiced in the cultural revolution of 1968. Among the urban middle class in post-Soviet Russia, in contrast, glamour continues to serve as an ideological representation of power. Helped by glamour ideology, status rituals banned from official discourse throughout the Soviet era have gone from “collective repressed” to cultural imperative. Based on interviews with three generations of women in Yekaterinburg and in and near Moscow, the article analyzes glamour as a micro-mechanism of power (Foucault). For women socialized under Stalin, elegance under conditions of scarcity was a matter of inventiveness. For the Khrushchev generation, glamour is related to normative notions of taste, status, and femininity. For young urban professionals today, dress is a tool for achieving professional and private goals.

TV Therapy without Psychology: 
Adapting the Self in Post-Soviet Media

Julia Lerner

The article discusses the constitution of a new therapeutic emotional cultural style in post-Soviet Russia. Its manifestations are particularly evident in the media, where off-the-shelf forms of Western late capitalist popular culture are imitated, seemingly in a one-to-one fashion. Engaging with the literature on emotional capitalism, the author points to the particular conditions in which therapeutic culture is being adapted in Russia. The alternative tradition of subjectivity in the Russian/Soviet cultural universe lacks a therapeutic Self, and the post-Soviet discursive condition is characterized by a gap in authoritative discourses of articulation of individual and private life. It is argued that as a result of these conditions the therapeutic culture is developing in post-Soviet Russia prior to or without psychology, and above all, it is not a product or function of psychological knowledge. The article’s empirical focus is on examples of translation of therapeutic forms in the field of TV media.

Memory, Gender, Silence: Oral History 
in (Post-)Soviet Russia and the Blurry 
Line Between the Public and the Private

Anika Walke

The paper discusses methodological and ethical challenges of oral history projects that address experiences of systematic violence. I offer a discussion of the relationship between individual remembering and social discourses about the past, interrogating how this relationship affects the representation of gendered experiences in the Soviet partisan movement during World War II. Utilizing theoretical and methodological approaches to oral history, especially of feminist scholarship, I explore how repercussions of Soviet discourses, namely of restrictions to public and private communication, play out in the construction of portrayals of the past in qualitative interviews.

Harold Garfinkel: Catalog of A Life

Andrei Korbut

This tribute to Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) attempts to situate the U.S. sociologist’s work, and in particular the ethnomethodological approach he developed, in the present state of the social sciences. Ethomethodology is neither a sociological theory nor a tradition in the customary sense of the term. This makes it more difficult to appreciate Garfinkel’s legacy as a unified project. In order to overcome this difficulty, the paper uses the metaphor of a catalog or, more precisely, a series of differently organized catalogs. First and most important among these is an inventory of Gafinkel’s research, beginning with his doctoral dissertation. The second is a catalog of ethnomethodological studies carried out by his colleagues and students. The third includes the sources, authors, and books that Garfinkel continuously returned to in his intellectual endeavor. Far from being exhaustive or final, this list aims, rather, to convey the spirit of ethnomethodology, whose effectiveness was proven in every one of Garfinkel’s studies.

Face to Face with Garfinkel: Sociology and Common Sense

Nona Shahnazarian

This brief memoir recounts one day the author spent with Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) and his wife at their house in Los Angeles—the day Garfinkel was invited to join the advisory board of Laboratorium. Intending to interview the sociologist, the author found herself instead having to respond to his questions and received career-building recommendations. The article stresses Garfinkel’s profound passion for his profession as well as the consideration, tact, and respect he showed his students.