Peter Kireevskii and the Development of Moscow Slavophilism

Abstract

Although the name of the folklorist Peter Kireevskii is well known to historians of nineteenth-century Russia, comparatively little has been written about his place within the Slavophile circle. Some scholars have treated him as the 'first' Slavophile. Others have questioned whether his views were in any sense really Slavophile at all. This article argues that Peter Kireevskii's life-long interest in Russian folklore was rooted both in his understanding of the Russian countryside and his exposure to the influence of a Russian Romantic tradition that viewed the narod as the authentic representative of national identity. It suggests that Kireevskii was from his youth convinced that Russia possessed a culture and history that was equal in value to any country in the West, but that it was only in the late 1830s that he stressed the role played by Orthodoxy in shaping Russia's development. Although his mature views brought him closer to the Slavophile 'mainstream', there were always some elements that set him apart, perhaps reflecting the fact that Slavophilism was a more eclectic and diverse phenomenon than sometimes realized.     

Studying the particular, illuminating the general: community studies and community in Wales

This article is inspired by Frankenberg's (1990 ) claim that the best way to understand general social processes is through the study of their manifestation in the details of social life. We look at how studies of community that have been carried out in Wales, particularly Village on the Border and The Family and Social Change (Rosser and Harris, 1965), have accomplished this link between the particular and the general. We then consider the findings of our own research, which is a restudy of Rosser and Harris, showing how they provide a counterbalance to grand theoretical claims about the transformations that are affecting community and family life. We find that although factors such as increasing geographical mobility and women's greater participation in paid work affect people's experiences of community, people continue to place a high value on what they call communities. Such communities are spoken about and defined in different ways but all are based on local social networks of kin, neighbours and friends and/or locally‐based associations. They are also gendered, with women playing a key role at both informal and formal levels of community. We suggest that the apparent resilience of local social relations evident in our research may help to explain the continued cultural and political resonance of community in Wales.     

The feeling of the incommensurable: Lawrence Grossberg on affect and incommensurability

This essay analyzes Lawrence Grossberg's work on the concept of commensuration, and especially his suggestion that we face a generalized crisis in our mechanisms for commensurating values. In making explicit the ways in which Grossberg's reflections on commensuration connect with his recent assessment of the contemporary social landscape in the United States – particularly the affective landscape that he describes in his work on the election of Donald Trump – I suggest that Grossberg's approach is, in part, distinguished by its attentiveness to the affective dimensions of commensuration (and of incommensurability). It can thus be contrasted with many previous approaches to commensuration, which view it exclusively as a problem at the level of practical reason, focusing on how we adjudicate between different bearers of value and how we justify, or give reasons for, our choices among them. Although such questions are also present in Grossberg's work, I argue that his writings contain a subtle treatment of the moods, attitudes, and tacit dispositions that characterize what if feels like to live through significant breakdowns in established logics of measure and comparison. Following Grossberg, I claim that having an adequate account of this affective dimension is crucial if we are to construct political alternatives that can address the felt sense of crisis in American political life.     

‘He is Quirky; He is the World's Greatest Psychologist’: On the Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common

In this article, we challenge the concept of the therapeutic relationship as an operationalisable entity. In contrast to this idea, we introduce Alphonso Lingis’ concept of community, and his distinction between the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common. This is done through speculative analysis of a transcribed sequence from a research interview with a boy who speaks about his experiences of receiving mental health care. This boy and his family were helped through a network‐oriented, dialogical approach. In the sequence highlighted here, the boy speaks of the significance of a particular mental health practitioner. The boy expresses appreciation for the help he has received, yet it is difficult to translate the boy's utterances into meaningful professional jargon. Although the paper makes use of an actual sequence from a research interview, the argument is not empirical in nature. The purpose of the paper is to elaborate on theory, and to examine some possible consequences for future practice.     

Modelling Community Work:

This paper argues that the most useful aspect of Rothman's development of his models for community practice back in 1968 was his specification of the variables which he used to differentiate between ''three important orientations to deliberate or purposive community change in contemporary American communities, both urban and rural, and overseas'' (Rothman, 1970, p. 21). While Rothman referred to these three orientations as Models A, B, and C, my contention has been that they would be described more accurately as approaches to practice which are adopted as the outcome of modelling activity using the variables Rothman identified. Indeed it is to the point that Rothman now refers to these as ''modes.'' Yet, ironically, this core feature of Rothman's work on modelling community practice is largely overlooked in subsequent literature on models even though it is this aspect which is an invaluable tool for practice, especially for students embarking on placement or on their first job. This paper starts from the premise that a model is a simplification of reality that is intended to order and clarify our perception of that reality while still encapsulating its essential characteristics. To have analytical value a model should specify key variables to be considered in assessing a situation in order to develop and evaluate possible action plans. Thus a model should enable prediction of likely outcomes if a particular plan of action is pursued. The paper starts, therefore, by refining the variables identified by Rothman in order to frame them as a model that can hold Rothman's Three Core Modes of Community Intervention. It is proposed that, with some refinement to take account of the insights from further theoretical and practice developments, this can also serve as a simple diagnostic tool to enable analysis by contemporary community workers. The outcome such analysis seeks is the specification of a basic orientation to practice and thus to the clarification of the strategies, roles and skills that are likely to be most useful given the particular approach chosen. The paper indicates how different theoretical perspectives, as well as approaches and strategies that have been identified since Rothman's original work, inform or fit into the proposed four-square model. In short the paper illustrates how an approach analogous to that employed by Rothman is still essential for reflexive community work.     

Mirrors and Metarealists: The Poetry of Oĺga Sedakova and Ivan Zhdanov

Abstract

My paper analyses the third volume of Gustav Shpet's Aesthetic Fragments with special regard to his quasi-mathematical formula allegedly expressing 'the aesthetic reception of the word' in a literary work that caps this text. The obviously unserious character of the algorithm proffered by Shpet raises the question of his intentions. The paper argues that this is a case of self-parody, of laughter that Samuel Beckett termed risus purus through which the Russian thinker reacted to the overall ambiguity of the socio-political situation in early 1922 when he wrote his essay.     

Hugh George Brennan: Glasgow University’s First Lecturer in Russian

To date little has been known, and less written, about the life of Hugh George Brennan, Glasgow University's first lecturer in Russian. The uncovering of previously unused Russian and British sources throwing fresh light on his life, intellectual development and occupations has made possible a fuller assessment of a significant figure in Glasgow's contribution to Slavonic Studies. Brennan lived and taught in Russia for 20 years. The resulting intense and unusually intimate experience of Russian life probably explains unconventional aspects of his Glasgow appointment. Brennan was an undoubted educational and social success in Russia. Events in the shape of the February Revolution of 1917 forced him to return to Britain. Glasgow's timely offer of a new position was the start of a very different life. This aspect of Brennan's career is reviewed mainly through his commitment to extensive public activities.     

Women's self‐defense and sexual assault resistance: The state of the field

Public attention to sexual assault has increased dramatically over the last decade, spurring questions about how it can be prevented. One approach that has received scant attention is women's self‐defense training (sometimes known as sexual assault resistance training). This neglect is curious because empowerment‐based women's self‐defense (ESD) training is so far the only approach that has produced substantively significant decreases in victimization rates. In this article, I review the research evidence on women's self‐defense training. Does resisting a sexual assault affect the outcome of sexual violence? Does self‐defense training further reduce women's risk of violence? What are the other consequences of self‐defense training? How does self‐defense work for different groups of women—for example, those who have survived prior victimizations? Are the critiques of women's self‐defense training valid? Finally, what do we still need to learn about women's self‐defense? Overall, I argue that this evidence presents a compelling case that women's self‐defense training should be central to any efforts to prevent sexual violence.     

Revivifying Russia: Literature,Theory, and Empire in Viktor Shklovskii's Civil War Writings

Abstract

When in 1924 Iurii Tynianov identified Viktor Shklovskii's memoir A Sentimental Journey as a work 'on the margin of literature', he was commenting on the text's generic experimentation. But he also provided an apt label for its geopolitical setting, as war drives Shklovskii back and forth from Russia's dying imperial centre Petrograd to the country's peripheries. The sometimes uneasy relationship between Shklovskii's literary theory and his movement through the disintegrating Empire is this essay's main focus. Drawing on recent scholarship that identifies a fundamental paradox of modern literary theory as both the cosmopolitan study of literature per se and a discipline validated by national literary canons, the essay proposes that Shklovskii negotiates cosmopolitan and national impulses by exploring Russian literature as the expression of a multi-ethnic and multilingual empire. In analogy with Shklovskii's famous dictum that art exists to 'make the stone stony', the argument is made that in his Civil War writings Shklovskii strove to revivify the Russian Empire, that is, to 'make Russia Russian', by presenting his readers with a new and strange view of Russia from its imperial borders.     

Briefly Noted

Last week, Safehouse, a Philadelphia nonprofit that will open a supervised injection site in the city (see ADAW, Oct. 15, 2018), has hired an executive director, Jeanette Bowles, Ph.D. According to radio station WHYY, Bowles will help with fundraising and finding a site. “I believe in it so much,” Bowles said. “We see this working in other places, and the evidence supports it so strongly, that we don't have progress in public health without some controversy and scrutiny accompanying it.” Whether the Department of Justice will allow the site to operate remains unclear. “I've joined the team that respectfully disagrees with the Justice Department,” Bowles said. “Sitting in the office and doing the work separate from the community has never been my approach or style,” she said. “Being embedded with the community and developing those relationships and having my feet on the ground has always been most important to me. That's how the best public health work is done, through building bridges with community members.” Bowles earned a bachelor's degree from Temple University; obtained his master's in social work from the University of Pennsylvania; did postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego; and for her Drexel dissertation focused on opioid overdoses in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. The city, in giving the go‐ahead for the injection facility, said it would have to be run by a private nongovernmental entity.     

The Family‐Friendly Community and Its Life Course Fit for Dual‐Earner Couples

Much is known about family‐friendly workplaces. This article examines the less understood family‐friendliness of the communities in which dual‐earner couples reside. Using data from a representative sample of dual‐earner couples (N = 727) in upstate New York, we examine how individual, couple, and neighborhood characteristics are associated with perceptions of community family‐friendliness. Using a life course perspective, we find that couples with young children rate their communities more favorably than do other couples. Findings also indicate that for couples with children of their own, living in a neighborhood with many other families with children is associated with higher ratings of family‐friendliness. We term this match, between a couple's life stage and their neighborhood's demographic structure, life stage‐neighborhood fit.     

Zinovy Zinik's Narratives of Cultural Dislocation

Abstract

The study examines Zinik's use of translation, theatre and misreading as metaphors for the act of border crossing in his novels and short stories. Through close readings of Zinik's novels The Lord and the Gamekeeper, The Mushroom Picker and The Russian Service, it is demonstrated that Zinik integrates these themes into his work with intent to expose novelistic conventions, confuse the boundary between art and life, and blur the roles of the author, reader and literary protagonist. Zinik's invitations to the reader to enter the worlds of his texts and experience cultural dislocation firsthand are continued in his recent short stories, which reflect the social changes and fluid cultural boundaries associated with globalisation. It is argued that, at the same time, Zinik's work reveals the limitations of conventional binary oppositions such as actor/audience and the utopian claims behind translation, interpretation and globalisation. Thus, it asserts the need to affirm new cultural symbols and practices through which individuals will shape transcultural identities as visions of a homogeneous global culture become more prevalent.     

Anthropological Approaches to Modern Societies in the 1940s

At the time that Julian Steward was formulating the Puerto Rico Project, several other approaches to complex societies were being pursued by American anthropologists. Beginning in the 1920s, funders'—and subsequently, New Deal agencies'—interest in addressing social problems impelled microcosmic community studies in the United States. That approach, essentially functionalist and ahistorical, was extended to village studies in other countries, and Redfield's folk-urban continuum became the dominant theoretical framework for comprehending regions within nations. Concurrently, acculturation theory legitimized anthropological interests beyond “primitives” and offered an alternative, two-way cultural contact model. With the onset of World War II, the culture and personality approach was applied to strategic nations, providing holistic configurational depictions of national character. Steward's effort can be seen as a critique of, and alternative to, these approaches that were prevalent in the late 1940s. Building upon his method of cultural ecology, his orientation toward work, and his notions about sociocultural integration, he devised a different way of studying a total society. Steward's framework was modified and expanded by members of his team, both in the field and in the writing of the jointly authored book. While slow to have a wider impact, the project—both in its successes and its limitations—signaled new departures for the anthropological study of the modern world.     

“People Will Bury Their Guns before They Surrender Them”: Implementing Domestic Violence Gun Control in Rural,Appalachian versus Urban Communities

Though gun violence is a global issue, the risk of firearm death is substantially higher in the United States than in other high‐income nations. Guns are deeply rooted within American culture; however, different subcultures exist along the urban‐rural divide. Such differences between urban and rural communities related to gun culture have been dubbed “firearm localism.” We investigated firearm localism in a state that has the highest proportion of firearm‐related domestic violence homicide and a large rural area representing a subgroup of rural culture: Appalachia. Specifically, key professionals reported issues related to domestic violence gun control in their communities. We conducted phone and in‐person surveys with a sample of community professionals (N = 133) working in victim services and the justice system in urban and Appalachian communities. Despite evidence of a strong gun culture in the rural communities, both urban and rural professionals estimated that about two‐thirds of their community would support restricting abusers' firearm access. Additionally, rural professionals were more likely to show concern for abusers' Second Amendment rights when discussing unintended negative consequences of gun confiscation; urban professionals were more likely to point out that gun confiscation can provide a false sense of security for victims. Policy implications are discussed.     

Time for Each Other: Work and Family Constraints Among Couples

Little is known about couples' shared time and how actual time spent together is associated with well‐being. In this study, the authors investigated how work and family demands are related to couples' shared time (total and exclusive) and individual well‐being (happiness, meaningfulness, and stress) when with one's spouse. They used individual‐level data from the 2003–2010 American Time Use Survey (N = 46,883), including the 2010 Well‐Being Module. The results indicated that individuals in full‐time working dual‐earner couples spend similar amounts of time together as individuals in traditional breadwinner–homemaker arrangements on weekdays after accounting for daily work demands. The findings also show that parents share significantly less total and exclusive spousal time together than nonparents, though there is considerable variation among parents by age of the youngest child. Of significance is that individuals experience greater happiness and meaning and less stress during time spent with a spouse opposed to time spent apart.     

Revisiting 'communities in Britain'

In this article I re‐examine Frankenberg’s Communities in Britain (1966) and his use of a ‘morphological continuum’ within his analysis. This analysis is itself a re‐assessment of some influential community studies conducted within the British Isles. I look at some particular ideas within the more theoretical part of this book, especially the ideas of ‘social redundancy’ and the distinction between ‘complex’ and ‘complicated’. I then consider some themes arising from some more recent studies. These themes include identity, networks and social capital and time and I argue that Frankenberg's analysis can still provide the reader with useful tools to think through the ideas and practices of community.     

'The world will be saved by beauty': The Revival of Romantic Theories of the Symbol in Pavel Florenskii's Works

Abstract

From a study of Pavel Florenskii's (1882–1937) works on the symbol from the 1920s, it is suggested that Florenskii's understanding of symbolism bears witness to the revival of romantic theories at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The continuity between romantic theories of the symbol and Florenskii's understanding of the symbolic image has not previously been noted. However, the closeness of Florenskii's writings and Viacheslav Ivanov's on the symbol has been noticed, while Ivanov's indebtedness to the German romantics has long been known. Thus, another relatively little studied dimension of Florenskii's work is uncovered and, in particular, his involvement with Russian Symbolism and with its main theoretical spokesman. Florenskii's understanding of the symbol is seen in the context of developments growing out of the October Revolution, but also, more broadly, as a response to the crisis of modernity. The romantic definition of the symbol, as accepted by Florenskii, is an attempt to restore the lost sense of belonging to 'higher' reality through the ontological identity between 'being' and 'thing'. The mission of art in this project is of fundamental importance and it can be summed up in the famous words of Dostoevskii's character, Prince Myshkin, in The Idiot: 'beauty will save the world'.     

Community Literacy Resources and Home Literacy Practices Among Immigrant Latino Families

ABSTRACT

This paper reports relationships among communities, families, and Spanish-speaking children's language and literacy development in kindergarten and grade 1. Findings from a study of 35 communities show that communities with greater concentrations of Latinos are less likely to have printed materials, and available materials are more likely to be in Spanish. Communities with higher income and education levels have more literacy materials in English. Contrary to predictions, there are few associations among community literacy resources, frequency of children's home reading activities, and children's literacy achievement. This lack of association is due to within-community variation in home literacy practices and to schools' impact on home literacy. However, there are associations among community and family language characteristics and child literacy outcomes in Spanish and English, suggesting that at least in the early stages of literacy development, communities' influence on Spanish-speaking children's literacy development is through language-learning opportunities rather than literacy-learning opportunities per se.     

George Herbert Mead on Intelligent Social Reconstruction*

Many thinkers have discussed the possibility of intelligent social reconstruction; but few have examined the nature of such reconstruction as closely as did George Herbert Mead. This paper explores Mead's analysis through his understanding of human nature and intelligence, his discussion of value conflicts and the possibility of their resolution by means of the community, and his recognition of the need for popular commitment as a necessary condition for any wide-spread success. While pointing to certain problems with his position, this paper concludes that there is a basic soundness to Mead's approach.     

We’re Decent People: Constructing and Managing Family Identity in Rural Working‐Class Communities

Using grounded theory methodology, I establish family identity management as an important type of invisible work that connects women's household‐based domestic activities with community members’ perceptions and treatment of them and their family members. Detailed observations of household routines and family interactions, as well as in‐depth interviews with working‐class women living in two rural trailer park communities, provide insight into the meanings women assign to this labor, and their motivations for performing this work. I describe the strategies that women use to accomplish the work, examine how the work supports family life and child development, and explain how the residential environment influences the organization and accomplishment of this work.