Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, Jul 15, 2005 - Biography & Autobiography - 406 pages
Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus is a gripping account of the developmental dynamics involved in the collapse of Soviet socialism. Fusing a narrative of human agency to his critical discussion of structural forces, Georgi M. Derluguian reconstructs from firsthand accounts the life story of Musa Shanib—who from a small town in the Caucasus grew to be a prominent leader in the Chechen revolution. In his examination of Shanib and his keen interest in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Derluguian discerns how and why this dissident intellectual became a nationalist warlord.

Exploring globalization, democratization, ethnic identity, and international terrorism, Derluguian contextualizes Shanib's personal trajectory from de-Stalinization through the nationalist rebellions of the 1990s, to the recent rise in Islamic militancy. He masterfully reveals not only how external economic and political forces affect the former Soviet republics but how those forces are in turn shaped by the individuals, institutions, ethnicities, and social networks that make up those societies. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and, of course, Bourdieu, Derluguian's explanation of the recent ethnic wars and terrorist acts in Russia succeeds in illuminating the role of human agency in shaping history.
 

Contents

I
1
II
29
III
65
IV
84
V
104
VI
129
VII
166
VIII
219
IX
287
X
325
XI
331
XII
335
XIII
377
XIV
395
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2005)

Georgi M. Derluguian is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the International Studies Program at Northwestern University. He is coeditor of Questioning Geopolitics.

Bibliographic information