Graduate Student, Anthropology
PhD candidate
|
Michael Lambek
Ivan Kalmar |
About
I have recently completed fieldwork in the Russian Urals (2010 - 2011)combining the study of the everyday and the framework of postsocialism/postcolonialism or, more precisely, post-utopianism.
More about my thesis: I investigate individual and social engagement with (broadly understood) uncertainty and ambiguity in contemporary Russia, and its general effects on psyche, sociality, and public culture. This project is based on a year of fieldwork among 30-35 year old residents of a medium-sized city, making this analysis an ethnographic study of the (arguably) "perestroika" generation at a specific historical and geographic point, a sociocultural investigation into contemporary postsocialist culture, and a contribution to the anthropology of uncertainty. I investigate how people experience and construct contingency, risk, danger, and what they do about them. More broadly, it is an investigation into epistemology - what one can know, and what one cannot, and why?
Some themes that emerged from my fieldwork: the risks, norms, (mis)communication and affects of driving; the knowledge and technologies of self, in particular temptations and self-control; the anxieties of parenthood; gambling and other types of psychological dependency; concepts of boredom and fun, and creativity; the meaning and significance of reacting quickly; risking it for fun; conspiracies, deceit and ways of detecting the truth; the significance of first encounters. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have contacts, ideas, suggestions, collaborative projects, or practically anything on these topics.
I am in Aberdeen, Scotland, for the fall of 2011; I will return to Toronto in winter 2012. I will be at Montreal AAA conference in November 2011.
Contact Information
| Telephone: |
+44 7580596267 |
| IM: | page_flipper |
