Alexander Bikbov / Александр Бикбов

Alexander Bikbov has been studying France’s contemporary protest movement since the late 2010s. In his view, it was at that time that the authorities gave the police permission to use violence. The Élysée Palace was frightened by the spontaneous mobilization of the “Yellow Vests” and chose to suppress street protests rather than to listen to the voice of the street. This fits into the global trend toward strengthening state control over public activity. What distinguishes France from some other countries is that society here continues to resist.

MOST.media interview on a topical Issue “Why is the French police brutally suppressing the street protest of high school students?” Sociologist Alexander Bikbov explains to Olga Proskurnina.

Why is 1935 an important date for understanding the institutions of street rally and democracy itself? Who in France is pretending that police violence doesn’t exist, and why? What are high school students actually demanding, and what do algorithms have to do with it? Which political forces are on their side, and whose side are they on? How does research on the “Yellow Vests” movement help us understand the high school students’ protests? When will this protest end, and what comes next? Which image of society are French high school students drawing? Is the French left currently fighting for an unconditional basic income? Read about all of this in the interview recorded in the immediate aftermath of the French high school students’ protests.

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Join Flying University expert talk in Berlin on 22 November 2024, 18:00 CET, face-to-face and in zoom

Foucault and the Audit Profession: A Hidden Liaison

Alexander Bikbov, Frank Fabel, Milda Bagdonaite

Using Foucault to investigate auditing as a practice of knowledge: what kind of epistemology, which contribution by scholars and insiders, what kind of control and what kind of governmentality is auditing?

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Osteuropa Institut (Freie Universität Berlin) invites to a lecture and discussion

Neomercantilist Turn of Neoliberal Government: Russia as a Global (South) Model?

by Alexander Bikbov

on 21 November 2024, 16:00-18:00

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How do authoritarian tendencies in governance sit together with market logic? Why has mercantilism returned to politics and how does it work? Sociologist Alexander Bikbov analyzes the deadly alliance of the neoliberal and conservative forces in contemporary Russia.

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Technological complexity and dangerous ambiguity of the Russian political regime, evolving from the early 2000s, is explored in two English-speaking discussions in Berlin.
April 23, Discussion of the book Flexible Authoritarianism by Anna Schwenck.
April 25, New Russian Mercantilism: the Path of War, presentation by Alexander Bikbov.

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Everyday Life, Planned Consumption and Leisure in the Late Soviet Union

hosted by Alexander Bikbov, DAAD visiting professor at Lotman Institute RUB.

The seminar features leading historians of the late Soviet period to present in distance sessions their groundbreaking research and personal testimony of the phenomena of Soviet population management, production and consumption, urban life and collective sensibilities.

View the programme and subscribe to participate

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Three courses that I am giving at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in the fall 2023 / 2024. The courses are held in English, in face-to-face sessions.
– Protests in Eastern and Western Europe since 2010
– Everyday life, consumption culture and planned leisure in the late Soviet Union
– Draw me your society: visual research of social imagination

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