Why Sociologists Should Complicate Nation-Building Narratives

The word “revolution” conjures powerful imagery. But what does it mean today? Do revolutions neatly promote the will of the people, forging radical transformation? Or is it more complicated? Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko joins us from Freie Universität Berlin to explain his take on “deficient revolutions” as he reflects on the 2014 Euromaidan uprising and recent events in Ukraine – where, he argues, conflict with roots in class has become polarised along “ethnic” lines, with devastating consequences.

Ukraine, he shows, is not an anomalous case on the periphery of Europe and the former USSR. Rather, its story is instructive for the study of global processes, including the “crisis of hegemony” – one he describes in terms of the “shellness” of politics, and which is in fact often compounded by contemporary revolutions. “People want their say”, Volodymyr explains. “They can overthrow the governments. But they cannot bring about the change that would represent their interests”.

An urgent discussion about decolonisation and discourse, progress, popular mobilisation and imagining alternative futures. With reflection on Soviet-era sci-fi authors, the Strugatsky brothers – and on sociologists’ duty to highlight complex, messy realities.

Guest: Volodymyr Ishchenko; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker

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Episode Resources

By Volodymyr Ishchenko

• Towards The Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War
• Ukrainian Voices?
• Class or regional cleavage? The Russian invasion and Ukraine’s ‘East/West’ divide
• Insufficiently diverse: The problem of nonviolent leverage and radicalization of Ukraine’s Maidan uprising, 2013–2014
• Why is Ukraine struggling to mobilise its citizens to fight?

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• Community, with Kirsteen Paton
• Security, with Daria Krivonos
• Good warning, Vietnam? Comparing the Russian opposition to Putin with the greatest anti-war movement in the US – Arseniy Kumankov

Further resources

• The Snail On The Slope – novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, also reviewed in the TLS by Muireann Maguire
• Understanding Ukraine’s Euromaidan Protests – Open Society Foundations
• “Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective” – Stefan Wolff

Read more about Antonio Gramsci, William H. Sewell and Dylan John Riley.

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