Teodor Shanin in Textbooks, Monographs and Essays: Reviewing the Scholar’s Major Works

Abstract

This review describes and analyzes the main scientific works of the remarkable BritishRussian sociologist Teodor Shanin (1930–2020). The suggestion is to divide Shanin’s rich intellectual heritage into three main genres: anthologies, monographs, and essays.The review begins with the genre of anthologies, understood in the broadest sense of the word: from a collection of modern scientific articles to collections of excerpts from classical works. In this genre, T. Shanin acted as the head of research projects, the author of editorial introductions and the scientific articles themselves in anthologies devoted to models of scientific knowledge of the world, peasants and peasant communities, developing countries, Marxist theory in connection with the development of Russia, types of informal-expolar economies, reflexive peasant studies, methods of qualitative research, interdisciplinary research of generations.Shanin’s books, written in the genre of authentic scientific monographs, on the social mobility of the Russian peasantry at the beginning of the 20th century, the two-volume “Russia as a Developing Society” and the collection of his selected scientific articles titled “Defining Peasants” are examined.In conclusion, it is noted that Teodor Shanin was a bright and sharp essayist who left a number of remarkable articles in the essay genre, namely in the later period of his life — when he was living and working in post-Soviet Russia. The defining feature of Shanin as a writing scientist was his ability to think in terms of original models in a wide interdisciplinary context.

Keywords

• teodor shanin
• theory
• methodology
• sociology of knowledge
• peasant studies
• historical sociology
• informal economy
• sociology of education
• russia and the west