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Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography
Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus is a gripping account of the developmental dynamics involved in the collapse of Soviet socialism. Fusing a narrative of human agency to his critical discussion of structural forces, Georgi M. Derluguian reconstructs from firsthand accounts the life story of Musa Shanib—who from a small town in the Caucasus grew to be a prominent leader in the Chechen revolution. In his examination of Shanib and his keen interest in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Derluguian discerns how and why this dissident intellectual became a nationalist warlord.
Exploring globalization, democratization, ethnic identity, and international terrorism, Derluguian contextualizes Shanib's personal trajectory from de-Stalinization through the nationalist rebellions of the 1990s, to the recent rise in Islamic militancy. He masterfully reveals not only how external economic and political forces affect the former Soviet republics but how those forces are in turn shaped by the individuals, institutions, ethnicities, and social networks that make up those societies. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and, of course, Bourdieu, Derluguian's explanation of the recent ethnic wars and terrorist acts in Russia succeeds in illuminating the role of human agency in shaping history.
Exploring globalization, democratization, ethnic identity, and international terrorism, Derluguian contextualizes Shanib's personal trajectory from de-Stalinization through the nationalist rebellions of the 1990s, to the recent rise in Islamic militancy. He masterfully reveals not only how external economic and political forces affect the former Soviet republics but how those forces are in turn shaped by the individuals, institutions, ethnicities, and social networks that make up those societies. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and, of course, Bourdieu, Derluguian's explanation of the recent ethnic wars and terrorist acts in Russia succeeds in illuminating the role of human agency in shaping history.
416 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 26, 2022
I've read that a few months ago and my opinion of that book was underwhelming. It has not changed.
The author is a sociologist. In this book, he tries to apply certain sociological theories to the development and collapse of the Soviet society in the 60s -90s. But his goal is even more ambitious than that - he is trying to synthesise micro-history with this big historical view on the society development. It seemed to me the latter is very much based on Marx rather that Weber. This is fair enough as he moves to the later theories of state and systems' theory. But I was not convinced by his application. As it eventually lead to the analyses of the classes in the Soviet Union. The biggest was casually called "proletariat" that includes everyone apart from nomenclature. I did not like the word "proletariat" in this context. Eventually we came to the phenomena of "underclass" which the author had to create to explain the process of the collapse of the USSR. Occasionally, I found this analysis borderline patronising. There is an argument in the book, but the supporting evidence did not fully work for me. Maybe someone else would find it helpful. In general I do not hold theoretical sociology at high esteem. So it might not be the book for me.
Also "the scientific" language made it sometimes a bit less subtle than I would wish:
"Two decades ago, arguing against simplistic theories of Third Word dependency, the French economist Lipietz suggested that it was not the West that was deliberately under developing the Third World. He rather pointed to the structural differential between the metropolis of capitalism and the peripheral outliers in the world of distribution of economic, military and cultural resources. This "objectively existing" situation tends to create the games in which the peripheral elites might rationally seek individual profit at the collectively irrational cost of underdeveloping their own countries. The post-Soviet counties provide many glaring examples."
That is fantastic conclusion that rather misses the point why those "outliers" are on the "periphery" at the first place. Another extract is about Chechnya's "underclass - sub-proletarian":
"The prospect of gaining new kinds of social, symbolic and economic capital motivated sib-proletarians to engage in nationalist activism. The toughness and cultural "backwardness" of those in this class, who primarily spoke native languages and often came from traditionally religious families, was suddenly to. there advantage in the new kind of nationalist mobilisation"
By "sub-proletrarians" he means anyone who were not earning their income from the state employment. Somehow they've become culturally backward and that was the reason they've decided they do not want to be the part of post Soviet Russia and were "mobilised" by other "socially backward" nationalists. I am not sure I agree with this type of analysis put it mildly.
My bigger issue was that his "micro-history" is was not revealing at all. It lacked details and turned a human life in a pretty generic case. And the promised syntheses did not fully take place.
All in all, it has reminded me my university days when I needed to indure through the lectures on theoretical Marxism and its sources.
Oh, and Bourdieu is hardly playing any role in this book apart from being mentioned. There are a few sociological theories, especially systems' theory that the author is applying in his analysis, but Bourdieu is more like an honorable mention because the main human object of that analysis was apparently reading it.
The book has got a lot of fans though, so it might be just me and my background.
The author is a sociologist. In this book, he tries to apply certain sociological theories to the development and collapse of the Soviet society in the 60s -90s. But his goal is even more ambitious than that - he is trying to synthesise micro-history with this big historical view on the society development. It seemed to me the latter is very much based on Marx rather that Weber. This is fair enough as he moves to the later theories of state and systems' theory. But I was not convinced by his application. As it eventually lead to the analyses of the classes in the Soviet Union. The biggest was casually called "proletariat" that includes everyone apart from nomenclature. I did not like the word "proletariat" in this context. Eventually we came to the phenomena of "underclass" which the author had to create to explain the process of the collapse of the USSR. Occasionally, I found this analysis borderline patronising. There is an argument in the book, but the supporting evidence did not fully work for me. Maybe someone else would find it helpful. In general I do not hold theoretical sociology at high esteem. So it might not be the book for me.
Also "the scientific" language made it sometimes a bit less subtle than I would wish:
"Two decades ago, arguing against simplistic theories of Third Word dependency, the French economist Lipietz suggested that it was not the West that was deliberately under developing the Third World. He rather pointed to the structural differential between the metropolis of capitalism and the peripheral outliers in the world of distribution of economic, military and cultural resources. This "objectively existing" situation tends to create the games in which the peripheral elites might rationally seek individual profit at the collectively irrational cost of underdeveloping their own countries. The post-Soviet counties provide many glaring examples."
That is fantastic conclusion that rather misses the point why those "outliers" are on the "periphery" at the first place. Another extract is about Chechnya's "underclass - sub-proletarian":
"The prospect of gaining new kinds of social, symbolic and economic capital motivated sib-proletarians to engage in nationalist activism. The toughness and cultural "backwardness" of those in this class, who primarily spoke native languages and often came from traditionally religious families, was suddenly to. there advantage in the new kind of nationalist mobilisation"
By "sub-proletrarians" he means anyone who were not earning their income from the state employment. Somehow they've become culturally backward and that was the reason they've decided they do not want to be the part of post Soviet Russia and were "mobilised" by other "socially backward" nationalists. I am not sure I agree with this type of analysis put it mildly.
My bigger issue was that his "micro-history" is was not revealing at all. It lacked details and turned a human life in a pretty generic case. And the promised syntheses did not fully take place.
All in all, it has reminded me my university days when I needed to indure through the lectures on theoretical Marxism and its sources.
Oh, and Bourdieu is hardly playing any role in this book apart from being mentioned. There are a few sociological theories, especially systems' theory that the author is applying in his analysis, but Bourdieu is more like an honorable mention because the main human object of that analysis was apparently reading it.
The book has got a lot of fans though, so it might be just me and my background.
March 4, 2013
While I am not the greatest fan of Bourdieuesque style of theorizing with its not always convincing style of materialist reasoning and a somewhat clumsy and un-reflexive direction of his 'will to know', I certainly greatly admire Derluguian's ceasless efforts at bridging a micro-historical and a micro-sociological fieldwork and constructing a larger structural view of the heterogeneities that accompanied the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. This generally runs through the main theme of the book, of how Musa Shahib, a Kharadino-Balkar intellectual, admirer of Bourdieu's sociology, who has, through the collapse of the Soviet Union, turned into a kind of a local nationalist warlord lite. Derluguian puts together histories, comparisons, descriptions and criticisms of the complex interplay of the class structures, government bureaucracy (nomenklatura) and intellectuals to dissect the historical trends of post-Stalinist 'liberalization' under Khruschev, the conservative contraction under Brezhnev and the continuation of the socially demanded liberalization under Gorbachev, culminating in the troublesome breakdown of the USSR, accompanied with the globalizing forces that turned many existing and working social structures into dust. This is a book of great density, conceptual sophistication and erudition, and although at times I wondered whether on this level, it is not a bit over-done with some of the author's not always-clear intentions, it seems to me as a worthy look into the political economy and the social structures of the post-Soviet world, which, I hope, will find interests of people interested in other regions than just the Caucasus.
September 25, 2021
Взяти хаотичний стиль Бурдьйо і сенс закопати його так глибоко в евристичеу історичну аналітику, що моєї підготовки не стало вподобати твір. Загальне враження - можно вывести мальчика из СССР, но нельзя вывести СССР
April 29, 2020
It's a very odd feeling that I finished reading this book on the day that its main protagonist, Musa/Yuri Shanibov passed away. I started reading excerpts from this book more than a year ago, but yesterday I finally finished. It's one of the best sociological works I've ever read: ethnographically rich, historically informed, theoretically profound, and written in an unpretentious style. My main complaint with the book is that Derluguian didn't write any other, similar monograph-length work. I'll write a longer review elsewhere but for now it suffices to say that this is a must-read for anyone interested in global sociology with a non-Western focus. It's at the same time a great work about the Caucasus, as it is a book about the transformation of the global order over the last century. My only minor complaint, if I really have to think of one, is that it is quite a long, dense book so that, as with any work that is both theoretical and historical, you sometimes forget what the overarching argument is as you are captivated by an anecdote or a historical side-alley.
October 25, 2022
An interesting book, with refreshing critical engagement with the Caucasus and wider Soviet dissolution. A trove of knowledge with invaluable insights, both ethnographic and conceptually-based, marred slightly by a clunky workmanlike prose style. I felt the social theoretical concepts he employed as frameworks were ultimately not up to the task of making sense of his research, with Bourdieu's sociology, world-systems theory (a la Wallerstein), and various strands of third world developmental theory creating a patchy and disjointed picture at times. Similarly, the supposed focus on Musa Shanib was often unclear or tangential. Perhaps an overly-ambitious project in the end, but certainly both balanced and invigorating.
May 8, 2020
Beyond a doubt the best book written on the Caucasus, and—perhaps—the fall of the Soviet Union.
August 15, 2013
Fantastic, wide-ranging look at why the Soviet Union fell apart. The theory is accessible even to someone as theory-resistant as I am.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews