“Voices from below”: discursive projections of the peasant worlds

Abstract

The author, who has been studying the Russian countryside for years, focuses on presenting two interrelated processes which inevitably occur during sociological practices. The first initial process is expressively summed up in the well-known formula by Andrei Platonov: “Good ideas do not come in comfort, they come as a result of encountering people and events”. These prolonged “encounters” with the world of peasants, while being continuously engulfed in the tranquil music of their humble existence, gives us a chance to come across places and situations where the deep implications of their world start to become apparent. The author cites examples of different communicative stage settings which came forth during field work, while trying to assess their information-discourse capacity. This experience of being present and the degree of involvement in the peasant world can be considered a basic reference point, a magnetic field which forms and coordinates the examined vital discordance. This experience is formalized into a set of distinct ways of being involved in the peasant worlds, and is conveyed mainly in a lively fashion — as in “do what I do”. This article also describes the essence of a second investigative process — studying the discursive formats which are the consequences of peasants’ everyday life practices. The author talks about certain special observation methods, which are sociolinguistic in their disciplinary orientation, and which focus on the study and analysis of Russian peasants’ environments. To be specific, the author justifies the possibilities and methods of constructing discursive projections of everyday peasant life. The article summarizes both the theoretical / methodological research of the author and his sociological field tests in the examined area.