Anything Can Happen: Everyday Morality and Social Theory in Russia by Anna Kruglova A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology University of Toronto © Copyright by Anna Kruglova 2016 Anything Can Happen: Everyday Morality and Social Theory in Russia Anna Kruglova Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology University of Toronto 2016 Abstract The language and the sensibilities of social theory are used differently, and to different purposes, by experts and “laymen.” But they are increasingly shared, challenging the “meta” status of social theory vis-à-vis analytics employed by the subjects of anthropological analysis. This dissertation draws on ten months of ethnographic study in Russia, a country that offers a unique perspective on the issue of epistemology and native social theory. Focusing on those born in the 1970s, it illuminates the life-worlds of people who have lived through profound social and historical transformation. This postsocialist space has been shaped by decades of mass indoctrination with a sociocentric, socialist, and modernist social philosophy, producing a kind of “vernacular Marxism” among its population. This dissertation examines vernacular Marxism in popular discourse, especially in talk about morality, the constitution of subjectivity, and techniques of the self. It shows how something often deemed to be an ideological or performative aspect of the “has-been” Soviet project ii continues to shape everyday morality and practical ethics. Vernacular Marxism considers not only the tension between the individual and society, but also between two forms of communal life, characterised here as the Collective and Communitas. Subjectivity is commonly perceived through a material-metaphysical lens as a resource and an exchange of “energy.” Consumption and the relationship to material objects are complicated by antifetishist imperatives. Everyday reasoning is influenced by dialectics, modernisation, and historical materialism. Asserting that vernacular Marxism is more than a “local ideology,” this work discusses the epistemological and ethical questions that arise when some routine “meta” analytics are applied to social reality that is already structured by social reflexivity. Rather than evaluating the fit between these analytics and social reality, this dissertation argues that scholars must be attuned to the mutual dislocation of their own knowledge and that of their “informants,” all within a flat epistemological and ethical hierarchy. iii Acknowledgments It is a humbling experience to list all the people who helped me while I worked on this dissertation. My warmest gratitude is to my advisors who provided me with unwavering guidance and support. Ivan Kalmar and Donna Young are two people who introduced me to anthropology, and who never let me lose sight of what makes anthropology and ethnography so great. Their intellectual and emotional support through all these years made this work possible. Michael Lambek patiently and wisely guided this work through countless first drafts, various stages of vagueness, and changes in intellectual direction. His critical and creative suggestions have been essential for the outcome. Equally important was his continuous refusal to curb my creativity by overshadowing it with his own powerful intellectual influence, pushing me towards making judgements rather than choices. I would like to thank my tutors at the University of Toronto. Ivan Kalmar first gave me an idea that social theory can be popular, in many senses of the word, while Naisargi Dave brought the intellectual intensity of her seminars to dizzying heights. The no-nonsense introduction to Marxism by Gavin Smith made me interested in postsocialism in new ways. Valentina Napolitano served as an example of extraordinarily engaging perceptiveness in doing the craft of anthropology. Joshua Barker showed how phenomenology and academic rigour can be combined, and Todd Sanders was the first to inspire me to think about the intersections of epistemology and ethics. I would also like to thank Natalia Krencil for her invaluable assistance in navigating the bureaucracy at the University of Toronto, saving me numerous times with timely reminders and clarifications in this long academic process. I am indebted to the following people for reading the many versions of this dissertation whether in part or in whole: Caroline Humphrey, Andrew Gilbert, Alaina Lemon, Suvi Salmenniemi, Michele Rivkin-Fish, Douglas Rogers, Patrick Brown, Nikolai Ssorin- Chaikov, Galina Orlova, Elena Trubina, Tatiana Barchunova, Natalia Samutina, Julia Lerner, Fabio Mattioli, Caterina Borelli, Anya Bernstein, Olga Zdravomyslova, Konstantin Bogdanov, Mikhail Nemtsev, and Olessia Kirtchik. The dissertation has been made better through their thoughtful comments. Special thanks to Barbara Anderson and Veronica Davydov for their friendship, comments, and patient editing of some earlier drafts. I am also iv grateful to Natalia Roudakova, Olga Shevchenko, and Maria Sidorkina who have been great friends, readers, and confidants since our meeting at the ASEEES conference in 2014. Thanks to my editor Erin Martineau for her great work in polishing the final draft. I would like to thank many friends and colleagues in Russia who have been a great support and much-needed reality check. Mikhail Rozhanskiy made me look at social history in a different way. Dmitry Trunov helped me to appreciate anthropology’s psychological aspects by sharing his expertise and experience in psychotherapy. Yana Litvinova and Dmitriy Vyatkin helped me to navigate contemporary philosophy. I thank Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov for asking focused and timely questions, and Anton Nikolotov for his many great suggestions. My special thanks for my colleagues at Moscow State University: Andrei Tutorski, for awesome late-night musings on the moral agency of drinking, driving, and lying; and to Dmitriy Oparin for his inspiring energy and anthropological curiosity. I am grateful to my once and future colleagues, the graduate students at University of Toronto Anthropology Department, whose brilliance and creativity have been inspiring for my own work. Timothy Makori, Asli Zengin, Olga Fedorenko, Dylan Gordon, Laura Sikstrom, Grant Otsuki, Behsad Sarmadi, Vivian Solana Moreno, Christopher Little, Glen Chua, and other people who participated in our dissertation writing workshop all waded patiently through the unfamiliar postsocialist anthropology in my early writings, and became great conversation partners and insightful commentators. Most of all, I am grateful to my friends and acquaintances and their families in Perm’ who shared their time and their stories with me. It is unfortunate that I cannot thank them by their real names, but I hope that they recognise themselves in my writings because this work is mostly about their warmth, wit, and wisdom. Throughout my fieldwork, I admired their focus on being moral agents in their uneasy lives, a concern that focused my own thinking on the great in the ordinary humanness. This research and dissertation would not be possible without the generous funding v provided by the University of Toronto, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. I also received intellectual and logistical support fromViktor Voronkov and the Center for Independent Social Research in St. Petersburg. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Joe, who never refused to be a sounding board for my ideas. My debt to him is substantial as he is by now much more learned about my anthropology than I am about his cognitive psychology. His optimism, encouragement, and unwavering support for the whole endeavour gave me confidence to stay on the path all these years. vi Table of Contents Introduction: When “Natives” Are Marxists ...................................................................................1 1 Vernacular Marxism: The Grammar of Agency ...................................................................8 2 The Collective and Communitas.........................................................................................15 3 Mobilisation and Articulation .............................................................................................17 4 Volubility and Voice...........................................................................................................20 5 Vernacular Marxism and Everyday Mythologies ...............................................................21 6 Chapter Outline ...................................................................................................................23 7 People: “The Last Soviet Idealists” ....................................................................................31 8 Notes on Methods ...............................................................................................................39 Chapter 1. Dangers of Articulation: Watching People Talk .......................................................41 1 Words That (Are) Matter: The Economy of Life Force and the Materiality of Language...............................................................................................44 2 The Etiquette of the Non-Polluting Message......................................................................46 3 Ideology and “the Real Reality” .........................................................................................49