Description
- Abstract:
- This dissertation explores how post-Soviet Russia's demographic reality came to be conceived of as a dramatic national problem and as an object of government intervention. The dissertation reconstructs the political, social, and cultural contexts of the population problem in Russia by tracing links between seemingly unrelated processes occurring in the social sciences, politics, and the everyday lives of Russian citizens. Based in Yekaterinburg, a large provincial city with a declining population, this dissertation focuses on: 1) what kind of expert knowledge is produced around the population problem and how this knowledge travels through its institutional sites of production and circulation, 2) how it gets reformulated and appropriated by different social actors making efforts to advance their interests and social goals, and 3) how this knowledge makes its way into cultural practices and informs the ways people in Russia relate to themselves and to others. It demonstrates the social world of the demographic problem as the moral underpinnings of the problem come to link different forms of knowledge expertise produced around the population problem. By examining the mechanisms of ideological misrecognition as experts involved in the population debate in Russia present underpopulation as a problem of "culture," morality, and family values, I show how the discourses, policies, and minutiae of professional practices of these experts obfuscate the political nature of the population debate and social inequality. While the literature on population politics in postsocialist societies successfully analyzes ideological tactics that make population concerns a legitimate state priority, the significance of this study is in demonstrating the cultural practices and stakes through which population concerns gain legitimacy among the country's inhabitants and get incorporated into people's narratives of themselves and others. I argue that against the backdrop of political and social change in Russia, population-related knowledge participates in outlining a social imaginary concerning individual virtuous behavior and moral relationships with others. Ultimately, the dissertation creates a social map of the perceived crisis of underpopulation, demonstrating how the "problem" is entangled in larger social, cultural, and political transformations taking place in contemporary Russia.<br/>
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2013)
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Citation
Leykin, Inna,
"'Population Prescriptions': State, Morality, and Population Politics in Contemporary Russia"
(2013).
Anthropology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0SQ8XQ2
