Papers by Zinaida Vasilyeva
Forum for Anthropology, 2024
This book is a study of the curatorial experience as an example of experimental participatory pra... more This book is a study of the curatorial experience as an example of experimental participatory practices in anthropology, in which the anthropologist is an active participant in the field and its co-organiser. In seven chapters, the researcher of materiality Francisco Martínez describes and problematises transdisciplinary collaborations in the preparation and curation of the exhibition, exploring their potential and limitations. What happens when an anthropologist becomes a curator and applies anthropological imagination and reflection on modes of knowledge production as a method of organising exhibition space? How do material objects and the connections between them form politically charged assemblages, and how can the reconfiguration of these connections generate change in the social field? What knowledge,
assumptions, material conditions and skills make transdisciplinary collaborations possible and productive? Martínez explores these and other questions, particularly focusing on the productivity of tensions in curatorial practice and demonstrating the heuristic potential of the exhibition as a space for participatory knowledge production. Here, objects operate not as illustrations to a predetermined narrative, but as epistemic devices that provoke questions and generate new meanings and connections. The book is written on materials collected by the author during the preparation and realisation of the exhibition Objects of Attention (Tallinn, 2019) and includes a rich description of the author’s curatorial experience and his interactions with museum staff, designers, artists and visitors. Martínez’s work contributes to experimental ethnography, which attempts to rethink and transcend subject-object relations in anthropological research, pushing the methodological boundaries of the discipline. It will be of interest to anyone interested in curatorial experience, ethnographies of transdisciplinary collaboration, experimental practices and methods, and collaborations with artists and designers.
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Antropologicheskij forum
The questions in the fifty-sixth issue of Antropologicheskij Forum addressed the changes that hav... more The questions in the fifty-sixth issue of Antropologicheskij Forum addressed the changes that have taken place in our lives and workover the past year. By focusing on the concept of “boundaries”, theeditors invited the authors to reflect on the changes that are occuringtoday in our professional practices, in the field, and in our understandingof the profession. The Forum was meant to be a platformfor dialogue between people not only divided, but still united byboundaries—disciplinary, epistemic, value-based, etc. The variety ofresponses and reactions received, and the sharpness and emotionalityof many remarks faced the editors with a difficult choice. Finally,we made the decision not to publish the materials of the ‘SocialSciences and Boundaries’ Forum in the journal. In our ‘Afterwordan Unpublished Forum’ we discuss topics that have become key today:silence, public dumbness, attempts to overcome them, and the searchfor new ways to talk about modernity in the social sciences in Russ...
Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 2019
Этнографическое обозрение, 2021
Данный форум представляет собой дискуссионные реплики коллег в ответ на статью Н.В. Ссорина-Чайко... more Данный форум представляет собой дискуссионные реплики коллег в ответ на статью Н.В. Ссорина-Чайкова “Антропология времени: очерк истории и современности”. Авторы рассматривают основные положения статьи, указывают на возможные направления развития ее аргументации – особенно в области темпоральной множественности – а также подвергают критическому анализу ряд ее постулатов. Таким образом, дискуссия дополняет обзор истории и современного состояния антропологии времени, включая исследования постсоветской и постколониальной антропологии и исследования глобализации западного времени и проблематики темпоральности антропоцена. Дискуссия завершается ответом Н.В. Ссорина-Чайкова на данные реплики.
Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2020
The Editorial Board decided to continue the discussion which started in the “Forum” (a written r... more The Editorial Board decided to continue the discussion which started in the “Forum” (a written round-table) in Antropologicheskij Forum no. 44, 2020, and asked the scholars who had participated in collaborative projects to answer questions such as: why has this form of academic work become widespread, what are its merits and drawbacks, and what challenges does it reveal in a multidisciplinary context? A collaborative fi eldwork-based research project represents a special case as there may arise confl icts regarding methodologies, techniques, habits, ethical procedures as well as a “competition for informants”. Participants of the “Forum” share their positive and negative experiences with col-laborative projects.
Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2007
From Russia with Code Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet Times, 2019
“The most striking achievement of this in so many ways outstanding book rests in its ethnographic... more “The most striking achievement of this in so many ways outstanding book rests in its ethnographic accounts of the RCS [Russian Computer Scientists] as a new type of power-knowledge intellectual…. The book is easy on technical language and should be accessible to a wide readership beyond Russian studies.” — Dušan I. Bjelic, Slavic Review
“From Russia with Code is a deeply informative book about the diaspora of talented Russian computer scientists who now are working in other countries: the United States, Israel, Germany, and elsewhere. It reveals the interaction between Russian computer culture and that of other countries. But it is much more than that: it tells us that computer science is not a single thing, but a skill that blossoms differently in different environments.” — Loren Graham, Professor of the History of Science Emeritus,
Experimental Collaborations Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices, Ed. by Adolfo Estalella and Tomás Sánchez Criado. Foreword by George E. Marcus. Afterword by Sarah Pink, 2018
Hochkultur für das Volk? Literatur, Kunst und Musik in der Sowjetunion aus kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive, 2018
The Soviet state is widely depicted as a totalitarian and omnipresent entity. Nevertheless, the a... more The Soviet state is widely depicted as a totalitarian and omnipresent entity. Nevertheless, the actual intensity of its presence in different contexts is evaluated in different ways by both researchers and subjects. Focusing on the example of the history of the amateur music project “Musical Fridays”, this article attempts to propose an alternative model of describing Soviet everyday life based on conceptual language inspired by the scholarship from Science and Technology Studies on the one hand, and on the analysis of the relationship between the state and society developed by Alexei Yurchak on the other hand. “Musical Fridays” were conducted during a period of twenty years (from 1978 till 1998) as a sort of club in Obninsk, a small “science-city” founded within the framework of the Soviet nuclear project. Although the “Fridays” were a musical leisure activity, this article deals less with the practice of music consumption itself, but focuses instead on the infrastructure that made the whole project possible. The term “infrastructure” is employed to describe the material, institutional, and social systems which facilitated the conception of “Musical Fridays” as an idea and its implementation as a concrete project, and which enabled its organizers to ensure its continuation for many years. One hypothesis states that the inconspicuousness of the infrastructure in the late Soviet era hints simultaneously at its functionality and effectiveness (a smoothly operating system always evades detection while providing a base level of necessary comfort) and points at its political significance. The author notices that regardless of the crucial importance of infrastructure for the maintenance of “Fridays”, the field partners tend to obfuscate the state's role in their activities and relegate it to the realm of the “invisible”. By excluding infrastructure from the narrative, the interviewees establish a rhetorical distance between themselves and the political content of the state, and put a fresh emphasis on the juxtaposition “we”/ "ours"/ “svoi” (society, common people) and “they” (the nomenclature, the state) which was so characteristic of the late-Soviet era.
В тексте рассмотрен языковой трансфер немецких лексем Selbstbetätigung / Selbsttätigkeit / самоде... more В тексте рассмотрен языковой трансфер немецких лексем Selbstbetätigung / Selbsttätigkeit / самодеятельность в русский язык и высказано предположение о том, что смысловые метаморфозы их русского эквивалента отмечают
этапы истории взаимодействия индивида и власти в советском обществе. Авторская гипотеза состоит в том, что советский материал позволяет обнаружить культурный механизм самодеятельности, встроенный в разнообразные
дискурсы и практики, где тесно и подчас противоречиво переплетаются политический императив, официальный и повседневный дискурс и субъектив ное стремление к самовыражению. Исследование функционирования этого
культурного механизма позволяет выявить один из специфических элементов феномена советской модерности.
2013 A Contrario, N19, p.53-67, 2013
Этнографическое обозрение, 2012
The paper focuses on the TRIZ community, formed around a shared interest in the “Theory of Invent... more The paper focuses on the TRIZ community, formed around a shared interest in the “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving” as developed by Genrich S. Altshuller during the 1960s and’70s in the Sviet Union. As a theory, TRIZ reached its popularity peak in the 1970s and ’80s, when many local TRIZ communities had been formed in different corners of the Soviet Union. These communities, consisting of both professional engineers and amateurs of inventorism, shared not only a rational algorithm-based approach toward innovation, but also a particular type of socialist morality. For many TRIZ adherents, this theory became not only a professional tool but rather a philosophy of life.
During the Perestroika period and the early 1990s, the increased level of outmigration from the (former) USSR helped to spread the TRIZ approach to innovation far beyond the confines of the Soviet Union. The author places particular emphasis on the tension between the philosophical logic underlying TRIZ and the work ethic characteristic of the community members and demonstrates how moral implications of the theory became a ground for internal conflicts within the community under conditions of capitalist economy. The article is based on ethnographic data collected in 2010 in St.Petersburg.
Антропологический форум, 2010
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Papers by Zinaida Vasilyeva
assumptions, material conditions and skills make transdisciplinary collaborations possible and productive? Martínez explores these and other questions, particularly focusing on the productivity of tensions in curatorial practice and demonstrating the heuristic potential of the exhibition as a space for participatory knowledge production. Here, objects operate not as illustrations to a predetermined narrative, but as epistemic devices that provoke questions and generate new meanings and connections. The book is written on materials collected by the author during the preparation and realisation of the exhibition Objects of Attention (Tallinn, 2019) and includes a rich description of the author’s curatorial experience and his interactions with museum staff, designers, artists and visitors. Martínez’s work contributes to experimental ethnography, which attempts to rethink and transcend subject-object relations in anthropological research, pushing the methodological boundaries of the discipline. It will be of interest to anyone interested in curatorial experience, ethnographies of transdisciplinary collaboration, experimental practices and methods, and collaborations with artists and designers.
“From Russia with Code is a deeply informative book about the diaspora of talented Russian computer scientists who now are working in other countries: the United States, Israel, Germany, and elsewhere. It reveals the interaction between Russian computer culture and that of other countries. But it is much more than that: it tells us that computer science is not a single thing, but a skill that blossoms differently in different environments.” — Loren Graham, Professor of the History of Science Emeritus,
этапы истории взаимодействия индивида и власти в советском обществе. Авторская гипотеза состоит в том, что советский материал позволяет обнаружить культурный механизм самодеятельности, встроенный в разнообразные
дискурсы и практики, где тесно и подчас противоречиво переплетаются политический императив, официальный и повседневный дискурс и субъектив ное стремление к самовыражению. Исследование функционирования этого
культурного механизма позволяет выявить один из специфических элементов феномена советской модерности.
During the Perestroika period and the early 1990s, the increased level of outmigration from the (former) USSR helped to spread the TRIZ approach to innovation far beyond the confines of the Soviet Union. The author places particular emphasis on the tension between the philosophical logic underlying TRIZ and the work ethic characteristic of the community members and demonstrates how moral implications of the theory became a ground for internal conflicts within the community under conditions of capitalist economy. The article is based on ethnographic data collected in 2010 in St.Petersburg.
assumptions, material conditions and skills make transdisciplinary collaborations possible and productive? Martínez explores these and other questions, particularly focusing on the productivity of tensions in curatorial practice and demonstrating the heuristic potential of the exhibition as a space for participatory knowledge production. Here, objects operate not as illustrations to a predetermined narrative, but as epistemic devices that provoke questions and generate new meanings and connections. The book is written on materials collected by the author during the preparation and realisation of the exhibition Objects of Attention (Tallinn, 2019) and includes a rich description of the author’s curatorial experience and his interactions with museum staff, designers, artists and visitors. Martínez’s work contributes to experimental ethnography, which attempts to rethink and transcend subject-object relations in anthropological research, pushing the methodological boundaries of the discipline. It will be of interest to anyone interested in curatorial experience, ethnographies of transdisciplinary collaboration, experimental practices and methods, and collaborations with artists and designers.
“From Russia with Code is a deeply informative book about the diaspora of talented Russian computer scientists who now are working in other countries: the United States, Israel, Germany, and elsewhere. It reveals the interaction between Russian computer culture and that of other countries. But it is much more than that: it tells us that computer science is not a single thing, but a skill that blossoms differently in different environments.” — Loren Graham, Professor of the History of Science Emeritus,
этапы истории взаимодействия индивида и власти в советском обществе. Авторская гипотеза состоит в том, что советский материал позволяет обнаружить культурный механизм самодеятельности, встроенный в разнообразные
дискурсы и практики, где тесно и подчас противоречиво переплетаются политический императив, официальный и повседневный дискурс и субъектив ное стремление к самовыражению. Исследование функционирования этого
культурного механизма позволяет выявить один из специфических элементов феномена советской модерности.
During the Perestroika period and the early 1990s, the increased level of outmigration from the (former) USSR helped to spread the TRIZ approach to innovation far beyond the confines of the Soviet Union. The author places particular emphasis on the tension between the philosophical logic underlying TRIZ and the work ethic characteristic of the community members and demonstrates how moral implications of the theory became a ground for internal conflicts within the community under conditions of capitalist economy. The article is based on ethnographic data collected in 2010 in St.Petersburg.