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“Good individualism”? Psychology, ethics, and neoliberalism in postsocialist Russia
Author(s) -
MATZA TOMAS
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01396.x
Subject(s) - neoliberalism (international relations) , governmentality , complicity , sociology , individualism , biopower , elite , meritocracy , politics , ambiguity , social science , environmental ethics , political science , law , linguistics , philosophy
Psychologists working in Russia's cities have found it both desirable and profitable to offer “psychological education” to the children of the elite. I examine two characterizations of this work—as a form of neoliberal subjectivation and as a post‐Soviet project focused on progressive sociopolitical reform. Exploring the tensions between them illuminates the historical specificity of self‐work in Russia, its relation to commerce and biopolitics, and its political ambiguity. I conclude that studies of governmentality that attend to both subjectivation as an ethical practice and social history can effectively render capitalist complicity and ordinary ethics in the same frame.