Looking West?: Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures (Post-Communist Cultural Studies) - Softcover

Pilkington, Hilary Anne; Omel'chenko, Elena; Flynn, Moya; Bliudina, Uliana

9780271021874: Looking West?: Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures (Post-Communist Cultural Studies)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 027102187X ISBN 13: 9780271021874

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2003

Russian youth culture has been a subject of great interest to researchers since 1991, but most studies to date have failed to consider the global context. Looking West? engages theories of cultural globalization to chart how post-Soviet Russia’s opening up to the West has been reflected in the cultural practices of its young people.

Visitors to Russia’s cities often interpret the presence of designer clothes shops, Internet caf�s, and a vibrant club scene as evidence of the "Westernization" of Russian youth. As Looking West? shows, however, the younger generation has adopted a "pick and mix" strategy with regard to Western cultural commodities that reflects a receptiveness to the global alongside a precious guarding of the local. The authors show us how young people perceive Russia to be positioned in current global flows of cultural exchange, what their sense of Russia’s place in the new global order is, and how they manage to "live with the West" on a daily basis.

Looking West? represents an important landmark in Russian-Western collaborative research. Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel’chenko have been at the heart of an eight-year collaboration between the University of Birmingham (U.K.) and Ul’ianovsk State University (Russia). This book was written by Pilkington and Omel’chenko with the team of researchers on the project—Moya Flynn, Ul’iana Bliudina, and Elena Starkova.

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About the Author:

Hilary Pilkington is Deputy Director of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Elena Omel'chenko is Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre "Region" at Ul'ianovsk State University.

Moya Flynn is ESRC postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham.

Ul'iana Bliudina is research associate of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre "Region" and a doctoral student at the Centre for Social Studies, Central European University, Warsaw.

Elena Starkova is head of the Sociological Laboratory, Ul'ianovsk State University.

Review:

“Looking West? is timely, well conceived, and an excellent amalgam of original sociological research, social and cultural theory, and comparative analysis. Hilary Pilkington and her colleagues have produced a work that will surely become the standard source on the topic for years to come.”

—Thomas Cushman, Wellesley College

“In this excellent book, five authors look at post-Soviet youth culture, and in particular at how Russian youth perceive ‘the West.’ By juxtaposing western products, music, and lifestyles with local youth cultural practices in a discursive and methodological fashion, the researchers manage to paint a vivid picture of Russian youth scenes.”

—Cordula Gdaniec, H-Net Book Reviews

“In this excellent book, five authors look at post-Soviet youth culture, and in particular at how Russian youth perceive ‘the West’.”

—Cordula Gdaniec, H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences

“Though these are important omissions, it is hard to ask more from a volume that already does so much. Ultimately, the authors promote a rethinking of how cultural globalization is studied and framed.

But through this dedicated collaborative effort—a model of international co-authorship that itself constitutes an important contribution to the literature—the authors throw into question some of the central premises of globalization talk, including the experiential validity of the term periphery and the assumption that national cultures are in decline.”

—Naomi Roslyn Galtz, Social Forces

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