Hilary Anne Pilkington and Elena Omel'chenko: Looking West?

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Looking West?
Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Culture

Hilary Anne Pilkington and Elena Omel'chenko

July | 2002 | 6 x 9 inches
World History

Hardback: $57.00 SH
ISBN-10: 0-271-02186-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-271-02186-7

Paperback: $24.50 SH
ISBN-10: 0-271-02187-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-271-02187-4

Post Communist Cultural Studies

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 Figures, Diagrams, 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

Notes

References

Index

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.

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

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.