Suchergebnisse

In the summer of 1924, the Bolshevik Party called on scholars, the police, the courts, and state officials to turn their attention to the villages of Russia. The subsequent campaign to 'face the countryside' generated a wealth of intelligence that fed into the regime's sense of alarmed conviction that the countryside was a space outside Bolshevik control. Richly rooted in archival sources, including local and central-level secret police reports, detailed cases of the local and provincial courts, government records, and newspaper reports, Face to the Village is a nuanced study of the everyday workings of the Russian village in the 1920s. Local-level officials emerge in Tracy McDonald's study as vital and pivotal historical actors, existing between the Party's expectations and peasant interests. McDonald's careful exposition of the relationships between the urban centre and the peasant countryside brings us closer to understanding the fateful decision to launch a frontal attack on the countryside in the fall of 1929 under the auspices of collectivization

What is the relationship between the historical Soviet countryside and the post-Soviet present both for the scholars who study them and for the population that inhabits them? Together Margaret Paxson, Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village; Jessica Allina-Pisano, The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth; and Douglas Rogers, The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals create a rich, nuanced portrait of contemporary rural life in parts of the former Soviet Union. When one reads the three books together, one finds evidence of interesting continuity alongside dynamism and change that varies depending on the region and on the questions that motivated the researcher. The three works ask in varied ways how individuals in post-Soviet society perceive their world and attempt to live in it. The three studies extend far and wide across the territory of the former Soviet Union: Solovyovo, three hundred miles north of Moscow; the Black Earth, more than four hundred miles to the south; and Sepych, about one thousand miles to the east.

Transforming Peasants is a collection of papers that focuses
primarily on the Russian peasantry between 1861–1930, with brief forays
into Poland, the Kirgiz steppe, and Turkestan. Judith Pallot's introduction
to the volume is informative and concise. She provides the reader with an
excellent overview of each paper and highlights each author's contribution
to the existing debates within the context of Russian and East European peasant
studies. Pallot is well versed in the comparative literature on the study of the
peasantry and notes the degree to which new work on the Russian, Central Asian,
and East European peasantries has been influenced, informed, and expanded by
this comparative material. What unifies the various selections in
Transforming Peasants is that each author is grappling with the way in
which the state, intellectuals, or educated society conceived of or
"imagined" peasants and how these conceptions, in turn, influenced,
shaped, or determined policy aimed at transforming the peasantry.

"Do both the zoo and the mental hospital induce psychosis, as humans are treated as animals and animals are treated as humans? How have we looked at animals in the past, and how do we look at them today? How have zoos presented themselves, and their purpose, over time? In response to the emergence of environmental and animal studies, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, theorists, literature scholars, and historians around the world have begun to explore the significance of zoological parks, past and present. Zoo Studies considers the modern zoo from a range of approaches and disciplines, united in a desire to blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman animals. The volume begins with an account of the first modern mental hospital, La Salpêtrière, established in 1656, and the first panoptical zoo, the menagerie at Versailles, created in 1662 by the same royal architect; the final chapter presents a choreographic performance that imagines the Toronto Zoo as a place where the human body can be inspired by animal bodies. From beginning to end, through interdisciplinary collaboration, this volume decentres the human subject and offers alternative ways of thinking about zoos and their inhabitants. This collection immerses readers in the lives of animals and their experiences of captivity and asks us to reflect on our own assumptions about both humans and animals. An original and groundbreaking work, Zoo Studies will change the way readers see nonhuman animals and themselves."--

Examines the relationship between focus of attention ‐ how much a person thinks about job and off‐job factors during work ‐ and people's reactions to change. Survey respondents were 205 telecommunications repair technicians who were being trained to use a new computerized job assignment system. Results indicate that technicians with high job focus reacted more strongly to a job change over time, being less absent and more job involved, compared with low job focus technicians. High levels of off‐job focus were associated with increasing levels of withdrawal. Discusses focus of attention's role in the facilitation of organizational changes.

Examines the relationship between perceived technological self‐efficacy (TSE) ‐ the belief in one's ability to perform successfully a technology sophisticated new task ‐ and people's reactions to change. Survey respondents were 205 telecommunications repair technicians, who were being trained to use a new computerized job assignment system. Indicates that technicians with high levels of TSE were significantly more satisfied with their jobs, reported doing more work of a higher quality, demonstrated fewer withdrawal behaviours, and were more committed to the organizations after the change, compared with workers with low TSE. Provides guidelines for enhancing self‐efficacy when making such changes.