Galina Belolyubskaya
Privat
Galina Beloylubskaya in an Ethnology library
"I would like to say that the chosen theme was greatly expanded during the visit at the Max-Planck Institute. I’d changed my view of this problem because I met new approaches in research and new themes that are unusual for Russia. Every week I wrote a small essay, which I weekly discussed with the supervisor. In addition, I had the opportunity to participate in seminars held by the institute."
Thanks to an Ulla Johansen Scholarship Galina Belolyubskaya had the unique opportunity to conduct research at the Max-Planck Institute in Halle (Saale) for half a year. She used her time there to expand her work on private and public spaces in societies.
Here, she talks about her research project:
At the beginning of work I tried to clarify the terms "traditional society", "private and public space", "private and public spheres", “privacy”. Later it was decided to divide the concept of "public" into two components with the values "collective" and "public". In addition, I decided to pick out a personal (private) area in the public space, and vice versa.
According to the research proposal, where I identified four levels for analyzing the features of private and public spaces in traditional societies of Siberia (generally in Yakutia), we discussed with my supervisor the following aspects:
1) Personality level. The concept of the “personal space” and “privacy” in perception of modern citizens of Sakha Republic. As part of the main questions I analyzed materials on related topics like consumer society, urban space, social networks, etc. The number of works is really wide, because I tried to cover general theoretic materials, and works about the experience of different countries, for example about the consuming in China or Japan, urban space in Japan, etc.
2) The second level is a level of clan. The main questions for analyzing: relationships between relatives, weakening ties within clans. Separately I examined the problem of family relationships in private/public, and their transformation in the modern world. This theme is popular among researchers then I studied works relating to family relationships in Europe and Asia.
3) The third level is a corporate level. The purpose is to define private and public in modern working (labor, corporate) spheres. The main point is manifestation of the "private" in the corporate (labor) culture.
4) Political level. The main issue for consideration was the topic of civil society. The Max-Planck Institute has a very good selection of literature on this subject and you can find papers on civil society in Asia, global civil society, etc.
5) At last, I considered dissertations, monographs and journals relating to the Siberia region separately.
Privat
In front of a pinboard at the Max-Planck Institute
I would like to say that the chosen theme was greatly expanded during the visit at the Max-Planck Institute. I’d changed my view of this problem because I met new approaches in research and new themes that are unusual for Russia. Every week I wrote a small essay, which I weekly discussed with the supervisor. In addition, I had the opportunity to participate in seminars held by the institute.
Comment: Meanwhile Dr. Belolyubskaya has proceeded her scientific career and even published an article in "Cities", co-authouring Prof. Dr. Otto Habeck, her supervisor during
her research stay at the University of Hamburg.
As of April 2014.
