The Peasant World in the Discourse of Generational Sorrow

Abstract

This article spells out the methodological considerations and various procedural and methodological subtleties developed over the author's quarter century of sociological field studies of Russia's peasant worlds. Particular attention is paid to “voices from below”—peasant discursive formats that capture, in natural and undiluted form, the evolution of peasant practices constituting the core of everyday life. In particular, the phenomenon of generational sorrow and a special chronological nostalgia that functions as a “social gyroscope” is identified and discursively captured. This phenomenon is noteworthy and useful for its ability to retain a record of the productively longed for past in a rural community's collective memory and thereby influence new peasant worlds taking shape today.

Keywords::

• chronological nostalgia
• discourse as a signal and form of being
• everyday peasant life
• evolution of peasant worlds
• narrative
• socioeconomic practices
• sociology of the countryside.

Notes

^* The author is quoting lines from Fyodor Tiutchev's famous 1829 poem “Cicero.”—Trans.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

V.G. Vinogradskii

Valerii G. Vinogradskii is a doctor of philosophical sciences and professor at Saratov Socioeconomic Institute, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Saratov, Russia. This publication was prepared with support from the Russian Humanities Scholarly Foundation, Project no. 15-03-00004.