'Wiggle your Wits!' Social Restructuring and the Transformation of Entertainment Genres in Today's Russia.
Among print genres that soared in popularity after the fall of socialism, crossword puzzles have been prominent, with their monthly sales reported around 36 million copies in 2001-02. Drawing on ethnographic observation, interviews with crossword readers, traders and publishers, as well as on analys...
| Published in: | Social Identities Vol. 13; no. 5; pp. 577 - 596 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Sep2007
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=26542692&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 26542692 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13504630 SEN jtl: Social Identities issn: 13504630 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Sep2007 vid: 13 iid: 5 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 26542692 10.1080/13504630701580241 ppf: 577 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 600KB tig: atl: 'Wiggle your Wits!' Social Restructuring and the Transformation of Entertainment Genres in Today's Russia. aug: au: Shevchenko, Olga su: Russia Socialism Social structure Vocabulary Lexicology Publishing Mass media genres Crossword puzzles Russians sug: subj: Socialism Social structure Vocabulary Lexicology Publishing Russia All Other Publishers Other publishers Book Publishers Mass media genres Crossword puzzles Russians ab: Among print genres that soared in popularity after the fall of socialism, crossword puzzles have been prominent, with their monthly sales reported around 36 million copies in 2001-02. Drawing on ethnographic observation, interviews with crossword readers, traders and publishers, as well as on analysis of the puzzles themselves, I argue that the Russian crossword boom is an instructive case of how forms of popular entertainment are borrowed and re-appropriated to serve distinctively local cultural logics. More specifically, the recent popularity of crossword puzzles has to be viewed in the context of the sweeping changes in the social structure of the Russian society. In the face of multiple dislocations of postsocialism, of frustrated expectations and unfulfilled claims, the changed genre of crosswords, far less high-brow and encyclopaedic than its Soviet predecessor, offered a wide circle of Russians a vocabulary for articulating their claims of cultural competence and, increasingly, of moral worth, and allowed them to imagine themselves as a moral community juxtaposed to the hostility of the surrounding world. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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