2007. vol. 6. No. 3

The reviewed book presents a critical overview of current urban theory. The author covers historical development of urban theory (distinguishing between theorizing modern city and theorizing postmodern city), and makes a subject overview, including topics such as "Globalization and the City", "Gendered City", etc. The review  puts the book in context of existing attempts to structure and codify urban theory, outlines the main points and structure of the book, and critically discusses several facets of the book, including the author's attempts to define "the urban".
city, urban theory, modern city, postmodern city, codification

The article is devoted to visual people studies in the Russia of the XVIII-th century – a specific field where results of academic expeditions and traveler’s notes were formatted in visual frame. Revealing and deconstruction of dominating versions of typifying are fulfilled on the base of graphic albums, book and journal illustrations, costume images on the surfaces of porcelain and art things. Examination of writing sources (the expedition accounts, journal articles and personal texts) brought to the conclusion that image of the people was as a rule the result of combination of the super power’ order to get knowledge of the resources of the Russian empire, a model of the ideal subjecthood, a desire of the territorial extending, the west European art conventions, colonial experience of displaying the world of civilization and barbarism, the ethnic stereotypes and a search for identity. Usage of the classification scheme from ‘natural history of the human being’ (taxonomy by Karl Linnaeus, for example) brought to the version ‘the Russian empire as the Kunstcamera of the exotic costumes’ (engravings by Ch.Rot). Actualizing of the ‘Russianness’ among the Russian elites encouraged distinguishing ‘the Russian people’ and autonomy of ‘the Russian theme’ (engravings by J. Le Prince, H.Geissler, E.Korneev)

The intellectual biography of the renowned British anthropologist Mary  Douglas unfolds as transition from social and cultural anthropology to sociological theory. The transition is traced up from the Durkheimian backgrounds  in her early works on the primitive cultures to the “grid-and-group” and “thought styles”  concepts for the analysis of the modern societies.