Inaccessible Accessibility: An Ethnographic Account Of Disability And Globalization In Contemporary Russia

Based on over twelve months of fieldwork in Russia, this dissertation explores what an ethnographic approach offers disability studies as a global, interdisciplinary, justice-oriented field. Focused on the personal, embodied narratives and experiences of five adults with mobility impairments in the regional capital city of Petrozavodsk, the dissertation draws on methods including participant observation, ethnographic interviews, performance ethnography, and analysis of public documents and popular media to trace the ways in which the category of disability is reproduced, stigmatized, and made meaningful in a contemporary postsoviet urban context. In tracing the ways in which concepts of disability and accessibility move transnational and transculturally as part of global expert cultures, I argue that Russian adults with disabilities expertly negotiate multiple modes of understanding disability, including historically and culturally rooted social stigma; psychosocial, therapeutic, or medicalized approaches; and democratic minority group citizenship. Considering the array of colloquial Russian terms that my interlocutors used to discuss issues of access and inaccess in informal settings, and their cultural antecedents, I suggest that the postsoviet infrastructural milieu is frequently posited as always opposed to development and European modernity. I draw on personal history narratives to relate how people with disabilities experienced the shifting discourses of human rights, democracy, and strategies of integration during the postsoviet transition of the 1990s through Putin's reconsolidation in the 2010s. The final section of the dissertation relates how adults with mobility impairments who came of age during the postsoviet transition years enact Russian citizenship and assert social worth in the context of an art therapy group, through online social networks, and in kinship and gender relations. This work contributes to cultural and medical anthropology, to the ethnography of postsocialism and NGO culture, and to the establishment of a robust anthropology of disability.Doctor of Philosoph

Protest against gender stereotypes in the Grinchenko’s family works

У статті досліджено гендерний дискурс у творчості родини Грінченків. Проаналізовано роль і місце родини Грінченків у жіночому русі кінця ХІХ – початку ХХ ст. на основі не досліджених раніше документівВ статье исследуется гендерный дискурс в творчестве семьи Гринченко. Рассматриваются роль и место семьи Гринченко в женском движении конца ХІХ – начала ХХ в. на основе неисследованных ранее документовThis article analyses Grinchenko’s family participation in Ukrainian women’s movement in the end of XIX – early XX century. The research based on famous works and previously unstudied documents unpublished articles by Boris Grinchenko, popular Maria Grinchenko’s chapbook, small fiction works and poetry, written by Boris, Maria and Nastya Grinchenko. Unpublished works are stored in the funds of the Institute of Manuscripts of the National Library of Ukraine named after V. Vernadsky. The analysis is carried out in a comparative aspect. The comparative approach is used to supplement the traditional interpretation of the work’s by disclosing other levels of each Grinchenko’s family member creative manner and biography. Analyzed works are chosen cause of need to enter them into scientific circulation. The aim of this paper is to highlight the new aspects of the gender discourse in Grinchenko’s family works and to show their connection and distinctive features. Ukrainians fought for their freedom in Ukrainian lands divided between the two empires. Women’s movement was a logical continuation of this struggle. Boris and Maria Grinchenko theoretically interpreted the "women's question" due to the special treatment of a woman whose remains were preserved in Ukrainian intelligent families. In addition, they, according to their beliefs, brought up their only daughter Anastasia (Nastya). Then Nastya Grinchenko became at the forefront of the universal struggle for creating a new society based on partnership and mutual respect. It is shown the prospects for further research in the global context of the Ukrainian literary process in the end of XIX – early XX centur