REVIEW: Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus

The New Left Review recently published a lengthy review of Georgi M. Derluguian's Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography. From the review by David Laitin: "Derluguian's method of elaborating class formations, their reformations and historical alliances through the technique of ethnography is an ingenious juxtaposition, making for a text that is both sociologically revealing and narratively gripping. His is a new form of class analysis, based on observation of the micro-sociological details of everyday life; but it also projects the political implications of those ground-level class alliances, and helps to reveal the processes that turn susceptibility to violent breakdown into actuality…. Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus gives direction to future work on the perils of authoritarian decline."

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.

Derluguian, Georgi M. Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography. 416 p., 2 maps, 6 tables, 4 line drawings. 6 x 9 2005
Cloth $65.00sc 0-226-14282-5 Spring 2005
Paper $25.00sp 0-226-14283-3 Spring 2005

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Maps
Photos
Introduction: Does Globalization Breed Ethnic Violence?
1. The Field
2. Complex Triangulations
3. The Dynamics of De-Stalinization
4. From 1968 to 1989
5. Social Structure
6. The Nationalization of Provincial Revolutions
7. The Scramble for Soviet Spoils
Theoretical Reprise: Possibility
Tables
Figures
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Source: Thanks to The Chicago Blog

See also: http://seansrusskiiblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/georgi-derluguians-bourdieus-secret.html