Looking West?
- Publish Date: 11/3/2003
- Dimensions: 6 x 9
- Page Count: 320 pages Illustrations: 35 illustrations
- Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-02186-7
- Paperback ISBN: 978-0-271-02187-4
- Series Name: Post-Communist Cultural Studies
Paperback Edition: $32.95
Sale Price: $8.24, You save 75% Add to Cart
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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 cafés, 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.
Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Hilary Pilkington
1. Cultural Globalization: A Peripheral Perspective
Hilary Pilkington and Uliana Bliudina
2. On the Outside Looking In? The Place of Youth in Russia’s New Media and Information Space
Elena Omel’chenko and Ul’iana Bliudina
3. Talking Global? Images of the West in the Youth Media
Moya Flynn and Elena Starkova
4. Through Their Own Eyes: Young People’s Images of "the West"
Elena Omel’chenko and Moya Flynn
5. "Progressives" and "Normals": Strategies for Glocal Living
Hilary Pilkington (with Elena Starkova)
6. The Dark Side of the Moon? Global and Local Horizons
Hilary Pilkington
7. Reconfiguring "the West": Style and Music in Russian Youth Cultural Practice
Hilary Pilkington
8. Living with the West
Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel’chenko
Conclusion
Hilary Pilkington
Appendix
References
Index
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