June 7, 7:30 pm
Notwithstanding the variety of people and groups (inter-)acting in the urban space, traditionally it is only professional researchers and “typical native inhabitants” who are acknowledged as “experts” in its portrayal. Only in the last few decades has interest grown in the alternative experience of urban life, the experience of the cultural and ethnic minorities settled in the city, as well as that of migrants, tourists and others. The study of these experiences allows us to overcome one of the key issues in urban research — the need to “flush out” those routine practices about which our knowledge is so constant and habituated that it defies rationalisation and definition. The view of the immigrant as an outsider striving to eventually overcome the “us and them” barrier allows us to highlight and analyze a city’s routine. In her lecture, Khokhlova will rely heavily on the findings of field studies into the life trajectories of migrants who have come to St Petersburg from other parts of Russia. She will demonstrate a whole range of parallels between the situation of a professional ethnographer investigating the urban realm, and a new arrival whose task is to make that realm their own: the difficulties of re-socialisation, the techniques necessary to show competence, the act of distancing oneself from one’s own culture, the disruption of routine during unusual “crisis-experiments” and many more besides.
Anisiya Khokhlova is a sociologist and urban researcher, director of the Studies in European Societies Masters programme, and a lecturer at St Petersburg State University. She holds a doctorate in Sociological Science.
This lecture is organized in collaboration with the Higher School of Economics in St Petersburg.
Admission is free of charge. The number of participants is limited. Please register in advance.
The Higher School of Economics has prepared a series of multidisciplinary lectures that seek to offer the general public a fresh perspective on the social phenomena and processes that we encounter every day. Leading Russian and international social scientists will use non-intuitive examples and innovative methods to show the audience just how the world in which we are living is changing before our very eyes. The speakers will present new readings on everyday phenomena, sharing recent research findings from the last 2-3 years, as well as their own personal methodologies. Each lecture offers its own introduction to the social sciences. The course is divided into three thematic blocks: Everyday Life, Culture and Big Data and New Technologies.
