University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses July 2020 THE PEOPLE WHO “BURN”: “COMMUNICATION,” UNITY, AND CHANGE IN BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE ON PUBLIC CREATIVITY Anton Dinerstein FUnivollowersity this of and Massachusetts additional works Amherst at: https:/ /scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, Art Practice Commons, Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Contemporary Art Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons, Eastern European Studies Commons, Epistemology Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Folklore Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, International and Intercultural Communication Commons, Language Interpretation and Translation Commons, Linguistic Anthropology Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Communication Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, Other Linguistics Commons, Other Philosophy Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Other Sociology Commons, Philosophy of Language Commons, Place and Environment Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Russian Linguistics Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Commons, Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons, Urban Studies Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Dinerstein, Anton, "THE PEOPLE WHO “BURN”: “COMMUNICATION,” UNITY, AND CHANGE IN BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE ON PUBLIC CREATIVITY" (2020). 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THE PEOPLE WHO “BURN”: “COMMUNICATION,” UNITY, AND CHANGE IN BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE ON PUBLIC CREATIVITY A Dissertation Presented by ANTON DINERSTEIN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2020 Department of Communication © Copyright by Anton Dinerstein 2020 All Rights Reserved THE PEOPLE WHO “BURN”: “COMMUNICATION,” UNITY, AND CHANGE IN BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE ON PUBLIC CREATIVITY A Dissertation Presented by ANTON DINERSTEIN Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Donal Carbaugh, Chair ____________________________________ Benjamin Bailey, Member ____________________________________ Jonathan Wynn, Member __________________________________ Sut Jhally, Department Chair Department of Communication DEDICATION To the people who “burn.” ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Donal Carbaugh for challenging me intellectually and for opening new perspectives to me on the ways to study culture and to approach communication. I would like to thank Benjamin Bailey, another member of my dissertation committee, for his constructive feedback and criticism and for sharing his knowledge on culture and identity. I also thank Jonathan Wynn, yet another member of my committee, for his helpful and instrumental insights and pointing me to relevant academic works which allowed me to refine my conceptual framework. I would like to thank the Department of Communication here at UMass Amherst for the great academic experience. I thank all the faculty members and all the professors I had a chance to learn from during my doctoral studies. I thank all the staff members who were very helpful and very patient when dealing with various issues I had to resolve and questions I have been asking, and who kept this department running even during the times of the coronavirus pandemic. I would like also to thank fellow graduate students for being good and supportive peers during the period of my study. I would like to thank my research participants, the people I have interviewed and had the pleasure to talk to during my fieldwork. I thank all those who reviewed and gave me their comments on various parts of this project – your contribution allowed me to refine multiple parts of this study and to bring it to its current state. I thank my parents and relatives for their support and for believing in me during this academic journey. I thank my friends and adversaries for keeping me energized. I thank my girlfriend, Marina, for her patience and positive attitude. v ABSTRACT THE PEOPLE WHO “BURN”: “COMMUNICATION,” UNITY, AND CHANGE IN BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE ON PUBLIC CREATIVITY MAY 2020 ANTON DINERSTEIN, B.A., BELARUSIAN STATE UNIVERSITY M.A., THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER M.S., THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, KNOXVILLE Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Donal Carbaugh The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I show how local research participants communicate six cultural identities through a cultural discourse when they speak about public creativity in Belarus. Additionally, I show how these categories of identity are structured as oppositional cultural codes, such as “State” vs. “People” or “Indifferent people” vs. “Talented, really creative people,” and how these discursive oppositions reflect a similar dynamic found in vi Ruthenian/Russian culture where the continuous interplay of opposing values has been a foundation of cultural unity throughout history. On another level, I show how the participants of these grassroots communities problematize the existing ideas and practices of being a Belarusian and of being a citizen in general. The prevailing cultural myth suggests that Belarus, like many post-Soviet spaces, is inferior to the “progressive” “West” and the “USA.” However, this is not the way Belarus is symbolically constructed in the grassroots communities I studied. The Belarus they envision living within is a place of togetherness, of synergetic cooperation, and with the emergence of alternative mythology and everyday routines out of which cultural, business, and social innovations arise. On yet another level, this research suggests that the process of creativity is, in its essence, a process of innovation, transformation, and change. I argue that such creative transformative processes in the society involve conflict, opposition, a struggle with everyday reality, out of which innovations come to life. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND OVERALL RESEARCH QUESTIONS .........................1 1.1 Context and background ....................................................................................4 1.2 Communication studies of Belarus ....................................................................8 1.3 Research questions and chapter overview .......................................................16 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .........................................................................20 2.1 Ethnography of communication and cultural discourse analysis .....................20 2.2 Review of related literature on culture, identity, and change ..........................31 3. METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURES ...........................43 3.1 Data collection procedures ...............................................................................43 3.2 Subjectivity and positionality statement ..........................................................46 3.3 Analytical procedures ......................................................................................47 4. CULTURAL IDENTITY IN BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE ON PUBLIC CREATIVITY........................................................................................................55 4.1 “State” vs. “people” .........................................................................................56 4.2 “State” and public performance: The tractor ballet .........................................62 4.3 Language matters .............................................................................................64 4.4 The people who “burn” ....................................................................................71 4.5 The “indifferent” people ..................................................................................75 4.6 “State,” “people,” and “change” ......................................................................79