Miscommunicating Social Change: Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

(Hardback)

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Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the progressive imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the more advanced Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between progressive and retrograde forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the White Ribbons social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (20132014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpentier, this book shows how progressive articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

Reviews

An impressive feat of political and intellectual imagination, although rooted in detailed empirical research. A major landmark in the study of post-communist Russia and Ukraine. -- Richard Sakwa, University of Kent
One of the most important and original books on the mediation of social change and "development." It tears apart the fabric of neocolonial platitude and calls intellectuals to account for their failure to understand that effective response to social injustice first requires subversion of its corresponding epistemological injustice. -- Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University
Miscommunicating Social Change is applied discourse theory at its best, driven by theory, but with a keen eye for socio-political complexity and messiness. The book is a chilling and sobering analysis of the derailment of democratic protest and activism, which does away with the romanticism of revolution. It is a grim reminder that social change projects built on essentialist and antagonist logics carry the seeds of destruction, of both themselves and their others. Most importantly, the book convincingly demonstrates how important the discursive is for the study of conflict and democracy, reminding us that we first think the enemy to death, and only then move in for the kill. -- Nico Carpentier, Uppsala University

Author Bio

Olga Baysha is assistant professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.