Svetlana Stephenson

London Metropolitan University · School of Social Sciences

In this paper we seek to extend Bakhtin’s reading of the folk carnival and apply it to help understand the carnivalesque, performative aspects of state power. Drawing on the work of Agamben, Foucault, Lacan and Žižek and recent scholarship on the role of laughter in the Stalinist totalitarian culture, we argue that the state can also laugh and that...

The article analyzes the public shaming campaigns that followed celebrity emigration from Russia at the beginning of the war against Ukraine. It shows that celebrity emigration represented a challenge to the construction of a nation morally and emotionally united around the war. The special status of celebrities in modern society as figures that pr...

In recent years, we have seen a resurgence in the practice of public branding, a process in which members of a society express moral indignation at the views or behavior of an individual or a group. This stigmatization is especially common on social media, but it can also take other forms (meetings of Academic Councils and ethics commissions, the s...

This article challenges a tendency prominent in critical theory—one that holds that being “vague and strange” constitute qualities of life opposed to the grid-like systems of coercive control intrinsic to the operation of modern power regimes which, by their ascriptive nature, are compelled to suppress all life which exhibits these traits. Conseque...

The resurgence of public shaming campaigns in modern societies has important antecedents in the relatively recent past. The paper addresses the practice of prorabotka, a ritual of public shaming that took place in schools, universities and workplaces in the Soviet Union. Prorabotka, whose genealogy can be traced to early post-revolutionary years, w...

Книга посвящена российским уличным преступным группировкам. Центральное место в ней занимают казанские группировки, их история, моральный кодекс ("пацанские понятия"), экономическая деятельность и трансформация этих организаций с конца 1970-х годов по 2000-е включительно. Помимо казанских группировок в книге анализируются имеющиеся данные по группи...

The paper addresses the nature of gang governance. It questions the notion that gangs regulate social and economic transactions and create stable orders in certain territories. It shows that, while presenting themselves as upholders of the ‘law’ in their territory, the gangs also create a climate of uncertainty and fear. The gangs manipulate their...

The article analyses the evolution of the state–organized crime relationship in Russia during the post-Soviet transition. Using a case study conducted in Tatarstan, which included interviews with criminal gang members and representatives of law enforcement agencies and analysis of secondary data, it argues that instead of a pattern of elimination o...

This article analyses data from a research project on territorial bandit gangs conducted in Kazan. The project involved 32 interviews with gang members aged between 17 and 35. It addresses the moral rules applied within the gangs and their interaction with the members of mainstream society. The author sees the social organization of the gangs as th...

This article analyses the violent practices of youth territorial groups in Moscow. These groups exist on the city periphery and mainly involve young people (most of them male), who are not well integrated into society through the schooling system. Rather than simply depending on violence as a survival tool within the dangerous and uncertain space o...

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. This book explores the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet...

This article discusses the evolution of street gangs in the Russian city of Kazan. Using historic and interview data, it shows that the changes in the social organization of these gangs were a reaction to a series of systemic crises in the Soviet and post-Soviet social order. As a result of power deficits, emerging in the space of the streets and i...

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. Despite the end-of-history rhetoric surrounding the subsequent 'transitions' from state socialism to democracy and n...

The paper analyses the strategies of homeless street children in Moscow connected with the accumulation of social capital. Based on recent empirical research, it looks at the involvement of children in non-criminal and criminal subcultures as a way to get access to important networks and resources, and shows how young people use their social skills...

The paper analyses the practice of killing animals in animal shelters. This practice, executed in relative secrecy, contradicts the self-proclaimed mission of animal welfare services of "saving lives" and "finding new homes" for the animals. The reason for the secrecy is that, while the principle of welfare legitimises the existence of these servic...

For some years now we have spoken of the crisis of the state. And we say intentionally that we are talking of such a crisis, meaning we as scholars in the field of the social sciences. Notwithstanding the great variety of approaches, opinions and issues focused upon during this time, what has come to the fore is that, in one way or another, we are...

The article analyzes the attributions of the causes of poverty and wealth in Russia and Estonia in 1991 and 1996 and their determinants. Among the latter are the perceived actual justice of the society, the perceived size of the middle class, and the personal position in the system of inequalities. Despite the economic hardships and a rise in inequ...

The article is organised as follows. The first four sections explain the potential determinants of Russian voting behaviour, which include normative commitment to a market economy, market evaluation in practice, economic experience during transition, and evaluation of the political system. In order to show the dynamics of these possible determinant...

This paper proposes and tests a causal path model for the influence of perceived economic justice upon support for government intervention aimed at reducing inequality. These constructs were linked by a pair of indirect pathways, mediated by social and individual attributions for poverty and wealth, and supplemented by a direct path. According to t...

This paper proposes and tests a causal path model for the influence of perceived economic justice upon support for government intervention aimed at reducing inequality. These constructs were linked by a pair of indirect pathways, mediated by social and individual attributions for poverty and wealth, and supplemented by a direct path. According to t...

Working paper on child labor written in 2002 for the ILO by Svetlana Stephenson, in preparation of the ILO Declaration entitled A Future Without Child Labour, under the mandate of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.