A Socio-Historical Reflection on Everyday Life and Everyday Politics in Post-War Communist Europe (1945–1991)
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Investigation of the various modalities of politicization in contemporary Belarus, in a context of protest and mass repression
Research area 2 – Norms and Transgression
Contact: ronan.hervouet(@)cefres.cz
Ronan Hervouet is a Professor of sociology at the University of Bordeaux and a member of the Centre Émile Durkheim (UMR 5116), of which he was Deputy Director from 2016 to 2019. Holding an “Agrégation” in economics and social sciences (1998), and a PhD in sociology from the University of Bordeaux (2004), he defended his HDR (higher doctorate with accreditation to supervise research) in social sciences at ENS-Paris Saclay in 2018. In Belarus, he taught at the Franco-Belarusian Faculty of Political Science and Administrative Studies of the European Humanities University in Minsk (1999-2001), and was co-director of the Franco-Belarusian Centre for Political Science and European Studies (from 2009 to 2012). In Bordeaux, he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux from 2005 to 2020. He also carried out teaching assignments at the French University College in St Petersburg (2018) and Moscow (2019).
His research focuses on the everyday life of authoritarian regimes. Adopting an ethnographic approach, he has published two surveys on contemporary Belarus: Datcha blues. Existences ordinaires et dictature en Biélorussie (Belin, 2009), and Le goût des tyrans. Une ethnographie politique du quotidien en Biélorussie (Le Bord de l’eau, 2020) – translated into English as A Taste for Oppression. A Political Ethnography of Everyday Life in Belarus (Berghahn Books, 2021).
At CEFRES, his research will focus on two aspects: a socio-historical reflection on everyday life and everyday politics in post-war communist Europe (1945-1991), and an investigation of the various modalities of politicization in contemporary Belarus, in a context of protest and mass repression.
His project is consistent with the scientific context of CEFRES, and in particular with two of the three priority focuses of the laboratory. It is linked to the questions raised within Focus 2 entitled “Norms and transgressions”. On the one hand, his work on everyday politics in communist Europe, on the displacement and modes of distancing and disengagement from the normative and normalizing ambitions of the state, resonates with the reflections carried out in this focus. On the other hand, the discussions of the reasons for the protests in Belarus call into question the performative ambition of the norms promoted by Lukashenko’s regime. The project is also linked to CEFRES Focus 3: “Objects, traces, maps: spaces of everyday life”. Everyday politics in communist Europe reveal forms of oblique attention to the political discourses disseminated on a large scale throughout the territory. These forms of political avoidance are sometimes expressed in what might be called third places, where the expression of a “quant-à-soi” (“apartness”) is more easily found: kitchens in Soviet flats, places for discreet, sometimes transgressive and oppositional discussions; gardens, vegetable gardens and dachas, which are seen by city dwellers as appropriate places for the expression of subjectivities and a sense of dignity; forests, rivers and mountains where people camp, sing, study, interact and debate, far from urban centers where people are more regularly and routinely exposed to the normalizing and disciplinary gaze of power, etc. These are examples of a specific geography of such forms of political avoidance, which could be discussed in this focus. The spatial dimension of the protests in Belarus (symbolic reversals of spaces that have become political: building courtyards, balconies; politicization of urban spaces: major roads, public squares), could also be informed by the discussions carried out within this focus
Monographs
- A Taste for Oppression. A Political Ethnography of Everyday Life in Belarus, Oxford et New York, Berghahn Books (« Anthropology of Europe ») 2021 .
- Le goût des tyrans. Une ethnographie politique du quotidien en Biélorussie, Lormont, Le Bord de l’eau (« Documents ») 2020.
- Charles-Henry Cuin, François Gresle et Ronan Hervouet, Histoire de la sociologie. De 1789 à nos jours, Paris, La Découverte (« Grands Repères / Manuels »), quatrième édition entièrement refondue et mise à jour, 2017.
- Datcha blues. Existences ordinaires et dictature en Biélorussie, Paris, Belin (« Europes centrales »), 2009. [1ère édition : 2007, Montreuil, Aux lieux d’être (« Mondes contemporains »)].
Edited Monographs
- Charles-Henry Cuin et Ronan Hervouet (dir), Durkheim aujourd’hui, Paris, PUF (« Le lien social »), 2018.
- Elisabeth Gessat-Anstett, Caroline Dufy et Ronan Hervouet (dir.), Quelles hiérarchies sociales en Europe ?, Paris, Pétra (« Europes : terrains et sociétés »), 2009.
Edited Special Issues of Scientific Journals
- Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, « Mondes ruraux et marchés dans l’Europe post-communiste » (dossier – numéro double – coordonné par Caroline Dufy et Ronan Hervouet), vol. 48, n° 1-2, 2017.
- Agora. Débats / jeunesses, « Jeunes générations en Europe : regards croisés Est-Ouest » (dossier coordonné par Pierre-Marie Chauvin, Caroline Dufy, Elisabeth Gessat-Anstett et Ronan Hervouet), n° 45, 2007.
Peer-reviewed articles
- « The Moral Economy of the Kolkhoz Worker, Or Why the Protest Movement in Belarus Does Not Seem to Concern the Collectivized Countryside», Slavic Review, vol. 80, n° 1, 2021, pp. 61-68.
- « A Political Ethnography of Rural Communities under an Authoritarian Regime. The Case of Belarus », Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique / Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, vol. 141, 2019, pp. 85-112.
- « Socialisme de marché et gouvernement des campagnes en Biélorussie », Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, vol. 48, n°1-2, 2017, pp. 85-110 (avec Alexandre Kurilo et Ioulia Shukan).
- « Des épouses dominées ? Mariages transnationaux, inégalités dans le couple et parcours de vie en France de femmes russes, biélorusses et ukrainiennes », Recherches familiales, n° 14, 2017, pp. 95-106 (avec Claire Schiff).
- « The Heritage of Soviet Paternalism in the Belarusian Countryside : The Moralization and Folklorization of the Social World », Mir Rossii [The Universe of Russia. Journal for Sociology and Ethnology – Moscou], vol. 25, n° 4, 2016, pp. 30-51 (avec Alexandre Kurilo).
- « Usages du passé et ordre social en Biélorussie. L’histoire d’un prêtre charismatique aux prises avec son passé criminel », Ethnologie française, vol. 44, n° 3, 2014, pp. 409-420.
- « Le ‘socialisme de marché’ dans la Biélorussie de Loukachenko : égalitarisme, néopatrimonialisme et dépendance extérieure », Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée, vol. 20, n° 3, 2013, pp. 97-113.
- « Travailler ‘bénévolement’ pour la collectivité : les subbotniki en Biélorussie postsoviétique », Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire, n° 78, 2010, pp. 87-104 (avec Alexandre Kurilo).
- « Datchas et mémoires familiales en Biélorussie », Ethnologie française, vol. 37, n° 3, 2007, pp. 533-540.
- « L’économie du potager en Biélorussie et en Russie », Études rurales, n° 177, 2006, pp. 25-42.
Articles
- « Portraits de Biélorusses en temps de révolution », Carnets de Terrain. Le blog de la revue Terrain, 5 août 2021 : https://blogterrain.hypotheses.org/17300
- « Les kolkhozes de Loukachenko : un regard ‘terre à terre’ sur la Biélorussie », AOC media – Analyse Opinion Critique, 8 septembre 2020 : https://aoc.media/analyse/2020/09/07/les-kolkhozes-de-loukachenko-un-regard-terre-a-terre-sur-la-bielorussie/
- « La tradition soviétique des subbotniki dans la Biélorussie de Loukachenko », La Revue russe, n° 41, 2013, pp. 25-36.
- « Authoritarianism from Below. Lessons from Ethnographic Studies in Belarus, The Anthropology of East Europe Review, vol. 31, n° 2, 2013, pp. 19-29: http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/4242
- « Dachas and vegetable gardens in Belarus. Economic and subjective stakes of an ‘ordinary passion’ », The Anthropology of East Europe Review, vol. 21, n° 1, pp. 159-168: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/374
Chapters in collective monographs
- « La postérité de l’œuvre de Durkheim (1858-1917) cent ans après», in Cuin Charles-Henry et Hervouet Ronan (dir.), Durkheim aujourd’hui, Paris, PUF (« Le lien social »), 2018, pp. 1-20 (avec Charles-Henry Cuin).
- « The Metamorphoses of the Dacha : Some Processual Thinking », in Dépelteau François et Savoia Landini Tatiana (dir.), Norbert Elias and Empirical Research, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 179-196 (avec François Dépelteau).
- « Les datchas en Biélorussie et en Russie dans les années 1970 et 1980: accès, formes et usages différenciés », in Nadège Ragaru et Antonela Capelle-Pogacean (dir.), Vie quotidienne et pouvoir sous le communisme. Consommer à l’Est, Paris, Karthala (« Relations internationales »), 2010, pp. 427-456.
- « Biélorussie. Mémoires et ruptures de vie de citoyens soviétiques », in Jérôme Heurtaux et Cédric Pellen (dir.), 1989 à l’Est de l’Europe. Une mémoire controversée, La Tour d’Aigues, Editions de l’Aube (« Monde en cours »), 2009, pp. 203-227.
- « ‘Être à la datcha’. Éléments d’analyse issus d’une recherche exploratoire », in François Dépelteau et Aurélie Lacassagne (dir.), Le Bélarus : l’état de l’exception, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003, pp. 257-317.
Book reviews
- Gouverner la vie privée. L’encadrement inégalitaire des séparations conjugales en France et au Québec d’Émilie Biland (ENS Éditions, 2019), Revue française de sociologie, volume 61, n° 3, 2020, pp. 483-486.
- Sociology in Russia. A Brief History de Larissa Titarenko et Elena Zdravomyslova (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Revue française de science politique, volume 69, n° 1, 2019, pp. 184-186.
- Une paradoxale oppression. Le pouvoir et les associations en Russie de Françoise Daucé (CNRS éditions, 2013), Le Mouvement Social, n° 260, 2017, pp. 157-160.
- On a mangé nos moutons. Le Kirghizstan, du berger au biznesman de Boris Pétric (Belin / Editions de la MSH, 2013), Revue française de science politique, volume 63, n° 6, pp. 1228-1229.
- « La Biélorussie, dernière dictature d’Europe » [lecture critique de : Brian BENETT, The Last Dictatorship in Europe. Belarus under Lukashenko, Londres, Hurst & Company, 2011 ; Valéri KARBALEVITCH, Le satrape de Biélorussie. Alexandre Loukachenko, dernier tyran d’Europe, Paris, François Bourin Editeur (« Les moutons noirs »), 2012 ; Andrew WILSON, Belarus. The Last European Dictatorship, New Haven et Londres, Yale University Press, 2011], Revue française de science politique, volume 63, n° 3-4, 2013, pp. 684-687.
- Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow d’Olga Shevchenko (Indiana University Press, 2009), Europe-Asia Studies, volume 65, n° 4, 2013, pp. 774-776.
- Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside de Melissa L. Caldwell (University of California Press, 2011), Cahiers du Monde russe, volume 51, n°4, octobre-décembre 2010, p. 740-743.
- Le troc dans le marché. Pour une sociologie des échanges dans la Russie post-soviétique de Caroline Dufy (L’Harmattan 2008), Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire, septembre 2009, n° 76, pp. 164-167.
- L’étreinte soviétique de Nicolas Hayoz (Droz, 1997), Revue Française de Sociologie, janvier-mars, volume 41, n° 1, 2000, pp. 181-183.
My main research focuses on representations of the past in digital games, how they are constructed by developers and perceived by players. About 56% of the Czech population regularly play digital games; the average age of a player is 33 years and the share of female players is over 30%. Titles set in the past or inspired by history regularly top the sales charts. However, the content of games is not much talked about in mainstream media, and academic historians have so far ignored them. Recent research shows that the digital games have become an influential historical medium due to their interactivity, performativity and immersion. This new form of popular history actually reflects and influences our historical culture, i.e. ‘how we both collectively and individually think about, understand, negotiate and talk about that past in the present’. 
This project explores biographical and autobiographical narrative strategies developed by psychoanalysts and describes the varied roles played by biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies within psychoanalytic literature. By analyzing both published and unpublished egodocuments this project introduces and develops the theory of “lifewriting turn” in the history of psychoanalytic literature with a special emphasis on the generic specificity of psychoanalysts’ life writing. Sigmund Freud’s close collaborators such as Fritz Wittels, Helena Deutsch, Siegfried Bernfeld, Marie Bonaparte, Edoardo Weiss, Max Schur, and Theodor Reik, alongside Ernest Jones, have contributed significantly to the reinterpretation and transformation of the genre of biography, memoir, and autobiography in 20th century.