Anna Kruglova | National Research University Higher School of Economics (original) (raw)

Papers by Anna Kruglova

Social Anthropology, Dec 1, 2022

Th e world's ethos in 2021 grew increasingly realistic, focusing on constraints and practicalitie... more Th e world's ethos in 2021 grew increasingly realistic, focusing on constraints and practicalities, accounting for 'bitter necessities', and choosing defensiveness, preservation and stability over creation and exploration. Th e rise of realism in the world's public and private spheres presents a challenge to anthropology's ability to integrate a moral compass, empirical embeddedness and epistemological value in the discipline. Th is review of research published in some major peer-reviewed Anglophone European journals in 2021 seeks to vindicate the optimistic kind of moral realism by showing its inescapable entanglement in two of the most powerful items on anthropologists' agendas today, the ontological and the future-oriented.

Laboratorium Russian Review of Social Research, 2013

for making the article better through their thoughtful comments. I also thank two anonymous revie... more for making the article better through their thoughtful comments. I also thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Laboratorium for their helpful suggestions. Growing out of the history of social, psychological, and moral-philosophical delineations of class in former USSR, the tension between two aesthetic/ethical stances was brought to a particularly stark relief, and given a new interpretation, in a recent contestation of public space in a mid-size industrial Russian city. The article explores how the intellectualist and, especially, the dystopic mode of engagement with the world is juxtaposed with the "sensory utopia" sensibility that asserts not only the givenness but the goodness and the necessity of sensory and emotional embeddedness in one's physical and social reality, as well as the obligation to strive for and to defend the right to uncomplicated pleasures. Instead of condemning the latter as reactionist recourse to "simpler pasts" growing out of traumas of postsocialism, I suggest exploring it as a phenomenon in its own right, a cultural resource, and an optimistic ground for the development of new urban, civic, and secular identities and collectivities.

Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Scholars have long tracked how the USSR, a laboratory of social engineering, was deeply informed ... more Scholars have long tracked how the USSR, a laboratory of social engineering, was deeply informed by local readings of Marxist social theory. Why, then, in recent years, have so many historical and anthropological studies of Russia excluded “Marxist” from the list of main descriptors, or optics, through which they view their material? In this essay, I argue that in much contemporary scholarship Marxism and its many afterlives have evidenced a kind of blind spot, reducing Marxism to “just” an ideology. I assert that rediscovering the presence of Marxism in Russia as a Gramscian hegemonic process and a vernacular that emerged among “laymen” can help us understand how a wide range of Russians continue to make sense of their worlds today. Drawing on several years of research in the city of Perm, I interpret everyday conversations among middle-age urbanites about morality, and demonstrate how this rediscovery of Marxism can elucidate what things matter for Russians today, and how. If soci...

The developing culture of mass private automobile ownership in Russia became a prominent platform... more The developing culture of mass private automobile ownership in Russia became a prominent platform for post-Soviet citizen-drivers to (re)negotiate their relationship with the state. The convergence of power, infrastructure, and modernity in automobility made salient the old Soviet promise of infrastructural and cultural development, delegitimizing the post-Soviet contraction of the state's sphere of responsibility. On the other hand, the inherent danger and autonomy of automobile technology, combined with highly spatialized local politics, reveal a number of political mechanisms and imaginaries that make such withdrawals peculiarly legitimate. Finally, through the windshield of a private car in Russia, the state emerges as the ontology and a total social fact. This contradicts the anti-statist, pluralist, and the localizing concepts of the state in contemporary anthropology. [automobility, accidents, the state, modernity, politics of statelessness, Russia] Развивающаяся в России культура владения и пользования частными автомобилями размечает площадку для политической дискуссии и переговоров жителей постсоветского пространства с государством. С одной стороны, переплетение власти, инфраструктуры и модерности в теме автомобильности обнаруживает Советскую уверенность в государственном обещании инфраструктурного и культурного развития, тем самым делегитимизируя попытки государства сократить зоны своей ответственности. С другой стороны, присущая автомобильным технологиям опасность и автономность, в сочетании с пространственной укорененностью любой политики в России, выявляют ряд политических механизмов и образов политического воображаемого, которые легитимизируют уходы государства от ответственности. В целом же эти взаимосвязи в поле частной автомобильности выявляют существование государства в России в качестве центральной онтологии и тотального социального факта. Этот взгляд противоречит анти-государственническим, плюралистическим и локализирующим представлениям о государстве в современной теории антропологии. [автомобильность, аварии, государство, современность, политика безгосударственности, Россия]

Ethics of witnessing in everyday talk, 2016

This article is an initial investigation of "witnessing", a genre of narrative that I have docume... more This article is an initial investigation of "witnessing", a genre of narrative that I have documented in the Russian city of Perm in the end of the "noughties". Witnessing is a conversational musing about some event which engages, in a particular way, the ethical and the lived-world's normativity/ normality of the informants. On one hand, witnessing pursues the goal of undermining one's identity and therefore affirming the singularity of one's life and experience. Witnessing allows to test one's personal compliance with society's norms, to go outside this zone of compliance, and to look back at those ethical norms as an observer, whose life's events are extra-ordinary and constitute a personal ethical challenge. The particular mechanics of witnessing, however, allows to re-confirm one's virtues and merits in accordance with cultural norms. In the article, I review several concepts that contemporary anthropologists use in interpretation of everyday narratives, and present "witnessing" in particular vis-à-vis the genre of "laments" made famous by Nancy Ries. In the article, I present several accounts of witnessing made in reference to various aspects of my informants' lives. Then I describe some approaches, derived from Western social philosophy, that may be of help in discerning the ontology of events that are made worthy of witnessing by my informants, and of witnessing itself. As a local phenomenon, it may be argued that witnessing is made possible in places, situations or communities where moral norms are particularly ambiguous or perceived as unstable, and therefore are subject to reflexivity, disagreement or outright critique. Witnessing therefore may be understood as an example of how the eclectic late/ post/soviet ethics works. In the end, I see how the ethical "coordinates" of my informants life-worlds can be vernacular effects of soviet Marxism, and also outline how my analysis of "witnessing" belongs to the "anthropology of experience" school of anthropology.

Social Theory and Everyday Marxists: Russian Perspectives on Epistemology and Ethics, 2017

Here, to the young all roads are open; Here, re spect is paid to the elders.

Sikstrom for making the article better through their thoughtful comments. I also thank two anonym... more Sikstrom for making the article better through their thoughtful comments. I also thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Laboratorium for their helpful suggestions.

Teaching Documents by Anna Kruglova