Alexander Bikbov
sociologist, editor, translator
Current academic affiliations:
Centre for Contemporary Philosophy and Social Sciences at Philosophy Department, Moscow State University, vice-director;
Maurice Halbwachs research Center (Paris), associate fellow.
Other affiliations:
interdisciplinary review Logos (Moscow), editor;
non-fiction book review Pushkin (Moscow), editor;
blog-platform for social movements Dvizhenie (in Russian), co-moderator.
Recent publications in international languages:
Research papers
2009 ″A Strange Defeat: The Reception of Pierre Bourdieu’s Works in Russia,″ Sociologica, 2-3.
2009 ″Is Sociology the Same Discipline in Russia and France? A Brief Political Micro-History,″ Laboratorium, 1. (extended version in Russian)
2008 ″Der Begriff ‚Persönlichkeit‘ als Indikator latenter Bürgerlichkeit im ‚spätsozialistischen‘ Sowjetstaat,″ in Alexander Haardt, Nikolaj Plotnikov (Hrsg.), Diskurse der Personalität. Die Begriffsgeschichte der ‚Person’ aus deutscher und russischer Perspektive. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
2005 ″Fragliche Autonomie. Zur Lage der Soziologie im heutigen Russland,″ Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 3. (extended version in Russian, part 1 and part 2)
Critical reflexion and interviews
2010 ″How Russian Universities Became the Future of World Education,″ Universities in Crisis, May 3.
2009 ″Russia, in morte di un avvocato″ (intervista di Lucia Sgueglia), Alias, 31 gennaio.
2009 ″Assassinats de Stanislav Markelov et Anastasia Baburova″ (entretien réalisé par Arthur Clech), Le blog de RusseRennes2, 22 janvier.
2008 ″The Attacks on Russian Activists: Who Stands to Gain?,″ Chtodelat news, November 20. (originally in Russian)
2008 ″On Practice and Critique (with Dmitry Vilensky),″ Transform, 06. (in Russian, in German, in Spanish)
2007 ″Solidarietà con gli studenti moscoviti,″ intervista di Francesca di Mattia, nel suo blog, 15 marzo.
Research papers in Russian, focused on: education and educational reform, socialized physical space, social imagery and social order, inequalities and social justice, sociology of science and of intellectual world, could be found here. Critical analysis of the current social and political trends, interviews and presentations, mostly in Russian, are collected here. Critical analysis developed in the form of reviews of recently published books is presented here.
Research projects:
since 1996: Sociology as profession in Russia and France, 1950-2010;
since 2003: Perception of socio-professional hierarchies and legitimacy of inequalities in Russia, France, Italy;
since 2007: Intellectual intermediaries in Russia, new agencies and strategies of the 1990s-2000s;
2004-2007: Prisons Information Group in France, intellectual commitment on the political scene;
2000-2005: Social logics of cultural consumption in contemporary Russia;
1999-2003: Institutions and concepts of the Russian State science policy, in the 1990s.
Member of international projects focused on: personality concepts in Russian and German intellectual context in XVII-XXI centuries (2005-08), diffusion of intermediate results of university researches (2007-08), experts in 1990s’ transformations of public policy in Russia and France (1999-2002), international circulation of books and ideas in social sciences (1996-98).
Other intellectual and public activities:
Editor and translator into Russian of publications by Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and certain contemporary French researchers.
Editor of collective monographs and special issues on experimental infractions of social order, political and economic conditions of critical cultural production, sociology of philosophy, contemporary social theories of social space and time.
Coordinator of public discussions on education and educational reforms, on prisons information in Russia and France.
Ancient affiliations:
2003-2008: Russian State University of Humanities, associate professor;
2004-2006: Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Petersburg), full-time professor;
1999-2008: informal sociology research and study group NORI (Moscow), coordinator;
1998-2003: Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, research fellow.
