Humanities & Social Sciences

The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia

Engaging in everyday struggle

by Alexandrina Vanke

Description

Despite the intense processes of deindustrialisation around the world, the working class continues to play an important role in post-industrial societies. However, working-class people are often stigmatised, morally judged and depicted negatively in dominant discourses. This book challenges stereotypical representations of workers, building on research into the everyday worlds of working-class and ordinary people in Russia's post-industrial cities. The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia is centred on the stories of local communities engaged in the everyday struggles that occur in deindustrialising settings under neoliberal neo-authoritarianism. The book suggests a novel approach to everyday life in post-industrial cities. Drawing on an ethnographic study with elements of arts-based research, the book presents a new genre of writing about workers influenced by the avant-garde documentary tradition and working-class literature.

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Reviews

In post-industrial societies, the dominant system of cultural signification reproduces the images of workers as a relic of the past, representing them as passive, weak, non-progressive and backward. This ethnographic study breaks these stereotypes. Exploring the urban life of working-class and ordinary people in major Russian cities, the book offers a novel approach to the everyday struggle of local communities in deindustrialising settings. Drawing on analysis of rich multi-sensory data, the author argues that workers are actively engaged in a wide range of practical activities taking place in their industrial neighbourhoods and other contexts of post-industrial cities. In case of Russia, this engagement in everyday struggle - mediated by Soviet and post-Soviet structures - allows workers to form class-consciousness of political and practical kind under neoliberal neo-authoritarian regime considerably restricting the opportunities for open collective protests. The approach of urban life elaborated in the book provides insight into the sensual, imaginary and practical aspects of everyday struggle helping to reveal the mechanisms of inequalities that working-class communities experience in city space and society. This valuable multi-sited ethnography with the elements of arts-based research revises our understanding of class feeling, deindustrialisation, neighbourhood, inequality, struggle and resistance. It contributes to the debate about the creative forms of everyday resistance of deindustrialising communities and the role of the working classes in social change. At the same time, the book provides a complex explanation of the processes in the whole Russian society.

Author Biography

Alexandrina Vanke is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Centre of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date January 2024
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526167637 / 1526167638
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages232
  • ReadershipCollege/higher education; Professional and scholarly
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216 X 138 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5747
  • Reference Code15070

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