Tag Archives: Moscow

Moscow war diary. Part 5. The absent voice of the Russian intelligentsia in the land of aspic

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kholodets (Ukrainian recipe)

Final Guest Post by Valery Kostrov, a resident of the capital, a humanities graduate

March 9, 2022
The flight of many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, which many pro-European and anti-Putin residents of Russia admired for many years, now causes unpleasant surprise and annoyance for many, it seems. There is an understanding that there could be political persecution of Dud, Dmitry Bykov or Anton Dolin. But after all, it was they who for many years turned to the enlightened European audience of the country, to show citizenship, courage, etc., believing that it was important to fight the regime in this way. And what? Where is their courage and citizenship? They left the country of the new “Z-intelligentsia” like Zakhar Prilepin… Now the voice of the “Russian European” will not only not be heard, it will be absent. And it must be admitted that Navalny became the only truly courageous leader, person and intellectual. Others were unlikely to be threatened by what Navalny received (although Dmitry Bykov seems to have survived the poisoning attempt in 2019), but the haste of this flight is somewhat amazing for many and has not yet been meaningfully understood by anyone. Moreover, with the introduction of total censorship, this can only be understood in kitchens, as it was in the 1970s.

The metaphor of the “kholodets country” (jelly, aspic) was also born – it trembles around the edges when shaken (middle class and big cities), but remains almost unchanged in a viscous state in the depths. It seems to be ready to melt, but vlast’ freezes it all the time, it can be stabbed with knives, but this will not have such a noticeable effect on integrity when frozen. So it is with us – sanctions pierce the country with economic knives, but the authorities will simply keep this jelly with a frost and a distributive economy. Pieces in the form of the middle class will fall off of course, but it seems that it was so superficial … Moscow especially – like fat, appearing on the surface of the jelly. They’ll sieve it off and put it in the trash and all will be well.

March 13, 2022
It is interesting that business in Russia no longer considers itself as an independent political entity, but only as one of the classes according to Simon Kordonsky, which is trying to reduce costs and increase profits in the conditions of corporate capitalism, which the country has become for some time ago. In this sense, it can be said that business, like the military class, is depoliticized in Russia. The so-called “oligarchs” from the 1990s. after the Khodorkovsky cases found their place between the glamorous life of eternal travelers on luxury yachts and the role of cosmopolitan emissaries of the state and their interests in global capitalism. The most cosmopolitan of them tried to find a compromise in the new military reality – abstractly calling for peace like sophomore students. It seems that this was the worst solution for their image in Russia and abroad – for some, their statements seemed to be a surrender of national interests, while for others they were not anti-war enough. As a result, many of them rush around different countries on their business jets and quickly lose influence and money. At the same time, there was an influential cohort of state-owned businessmen in Russia who are at the helm of state-owned corporations, show high management efficiency and strive to implement advanced management technologies in their structures. The most striking figure here remains German Gref, who seems to have not yet expressed a clear position on what is happening and his Sberbank is still in working condition. “Systemic liberals” in business and government should soberly assess the depth of the defeat inflicted by the sanctions on the Russian economy, but they did not outline a visible political position. It is quite likely that now this is impossible, since the stunning economic attack of the West on Russia leaves them no other option than to put out the fire on the ship together with everyone, so as not to be branded as a traitor to national interests. In this regard, the West acted tough and consistently, but not entirely far-sighted, leaving no room for communication.


After the closure of McDonald’s and other global fast food chains that have been operating in Russia for many years, the question arises of replacing them with local businesses. At the level of government officials (Volodin), the departure of foreign networks was perceived with optimism, but Russian businessmen themselves react to this prospect with skepticism. A few days ago, the opinion of the owner of the well-known and large fast food chain based on Russian cuisine (mainly pancakes with filling) “Teremok” Mikhail Goncharov appeared. He believes that the unique technological, logistical and marketing solutions that McDonald’s possessed cannot be replaced in Russia and complains about the lack of targeted government support for national businesses:


“Teremok and other representatives of Russian business were not created as competitors to McDonald’s simply because we don’t know how to do it (meaning – as well) as they do. Neither technologically nor in terms of management and marketing.” https://tjournal.ru/opinions/562982-osnovatel-seti-teremok-mesto-makdonaldsa-v-rossii-nikto-ne-zaymet-my-tak-ne-umeem

“All this comes from decades of hard work by hundreds of thousands of executives, marketers and engineers, and even with the help of stimulating development (!) Government measures. So far, we do not have these measures at all. On the contrary, the existing measures and modes of operation stimulate the degradation and decay of any large business.”


In other words, Russian business was a diligent student of its Western competitors, but it is extremely difficult to make a quick import substitution under the current conditions. In addition, many medium-sized Russian companies are already facing problems with the supply and renewal of equipment, spare parts, with the breakdown of established supply chains and are experiencing a state of shock. Many people think about survival, not about development. Of course, regional producers of food and alcohol will survive by switching to a simplified product line, but this will not be a full-fledged replacement for Western companies. In fact, no one seems to know how the situation will develop in the coming year.


If we talk about the political subjectivity of medium-sized businesses (which are often a large employer in the regions), then we must remember that this subjectivity was also very limited and concerned only those aspects, inclusion in power structures that helped this business to have insider information and to influence the regional authorities in their interests. After the turbulent 1990s, when “power entrepreneurs” and “new Russians” actively entered politics, other times came: after building the “vertical of power”, regional entrepreneurs became part of the “Big deal” or “new social contract” between Putin and society . They remained loyal and donated to the needs of the regions within the framework of “social responsibility”, they could be deputies of city and regional parliaments, but almost never participated in non-imitation political activity. They kept quiet and made money. Various public associations of small businesses “Opora Rossii” or large corporations of the RSPP rather resolved government relations issues and lobbied for the interests of individual business groups, but also were not civil subjects.


It must be said that the position “business is not politics” or “business is not politics” or the neo-liberal version of corporate social responsibility (CSR) “we pay taxes, we give jobs and in this way we perform our civic function” (Milton Friedman) has become very popular in Russia . In the 1990s, a right-libertarian individualist cult of money and an “American story” of success in the vein of Henry Ford or Herbalife network marketing came into vogue among the country’s younger generation, who had abandoned any Marxist interpretation of the social order. Interestingly, the “dollar” and personal success in caricature form captured the minds of many Russians who believed that they could and should become personally successful outside the state and public institutions. In the 2010s, on the wave of new ideologization, Ayn Rand and her famous novel Atlas Shrugged came into fashion when they began to think that minimizing the participation of the state in one’s destiny and a competitive market economy would be a salvation from corruption and bureaucracy. Then the popularity of the idea of ​​“passive income” began to grow – playing on exchange electronic platforms in order to obtain long-term income, which will become the basis of well-being instead of a state pension.


Thus, business (small, medium and large) turned out to be politically subjectless and could only complain to the state about bureaucratic barriers and tax burdens. Now they all suffer from sanctions and each chooses his own path to salvation or survival. A thin layer of the urban creative class and innovative industries (IT, advertising, design) will most likely be suppressed or many will emigrate, there will be more state corporations and derizhism in industry and technology, small and medium-sized businesses will survive on their own – existing in a gray zone of increasingly less clear economic rules and chaotic market.


Will business have political subjectivity? Hard to say. Among the employees and office managers of large advanced Russian companies, their own “Ukrainian war” is already underway; many of them considered the earned style of Western consumption an important element of class superiority, they wanted to travel to Western European countries, someone even had real estate there. Now things have become complicated and they are of course unhappy. But they also have mortgages and are now afraid of losing their jobs, so their readiness for political mobilization is not so easy to believe.

March 14, 2022.
In the early autumn of last year, I became interested in the topic of the Latin American dictatorships of the 1960s and 80s. I watched the film “Kamchatka” (2002, directed by Marcelo Pinheiro) and read the novel by Marcelo Figueres. Somehow the clouds were gathering in Russia. Now everything is becoming more relevant – under different scenarios, it seems that there will be no good outcome for Russia. In the meantime every day I find out how colleagues leave the country – the intellectual circle is getting poorer. We stay. Nobody is waiting for us. Will there be something tomorrow? The war will continue…

“The film is seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, Harry (Matías del Pozo), who does not know that Argentina’s 1976 coup d’état is impacting his life. After witnessing the “disappearance” of dissident friends, a human rights lawyer (Ricardo Darín) and his research scientist wife (Cecilia Roth) flee the city and hide from the military police in a vacant summer house. With them are their two kids: Harry, who is fascinated with the escape artistry of Harry Houdini, and El Enano, his little brother. (Translated as “Little Guy” in the English subtitles, played by Milton de la Canal. The actual translation is “dwarf”.) The family adopts new identities and attempts to lead a normal life. Later, they are joined by a student who is using the alias Lucas (Tomás Fonzi). Their new life is difficult, but a visit with their estranged grandparents (Fernanda Mistral and Héctor Alterio) reveals that they are still a close-knit family. Subtly hinted, however, and used as a metaphor, is the mother’s constant smoking and El Enano’s renewed bed-wetting. Both serve to show how stressful and precarious their situation is.” Kamchatka (2002) – Plot Summary – IMDb

Is Moscow the most liveable global city in the world?

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Quality of Life Ranking for 29 World Cities

A draft of the UN’s global cities prosperity ranking 2022 saw Moscow take first place for ‘liveability’. Cue crowing from RT, who were the only outlet to run the story today. Coverage highlights Moscow’s scores for quality of life and wellbeing, but what does liveability really mean? This was, ironically, one of the concluding points of my book [pdf opens automatically]: that for their inhabitants, many small deindustrializing towns in Russia are highly ‘habitable’, in comparison to the big cities in Russia. [Links to the rest of the book here]

When indices are published about any ‘quality’ of life measure, I’m always sceptical. The question of course is always – liveable for whom? Moscow is even more diverse than ever, and surely that’s a good thing, right? But what if we substitute more ‘unequal’ for ‘diverse’? Far too often the commentary to these reports is made either by ‘expats’ – who have a very skewed view, obviously, or by the urban middle Russian class who have benefitted most from Mayor Sobyanin’s transformations (themselves mainly a supercharged version of the previous governance – see my series of posts on governance from earlier this year).

Let’s have a quick look at the UN report [annoyingly only opens as a pdf]. It has six criteria: Productivity (and I recommend this recent book on that subject by Michael Haynes), Infrastructure, Quality of Life, and Equity, Environment, and Governance. The premise of the index itself is a little misleading, as it only includes 29 cities in the first place, and there is no clear rationale for selection. We get Delhi, but not Karachi. There’s New York, but no Los Angeles. The exercise seems unintentionally set up to flatter metropolises with lots of mass transit urban mobility, well-paid jobs, housing growth, educational attainment, public space. Note that Quality of Life is a measure independent of Social Inclusion and Equity – the latter only includes income equality as a minor measure with ‘women in local government’ getting as much weight. The index draws on existing UN Sustainable Development Goal indicators (I teach a course on this topic) and adds a few more relating to ‘tech’, airports, road congestion (still a notorious problem in Moscow), science and education, culture and recreation, and e-governance.

Unsurprisingly, Moscow does really well on infrastructure and e-governance. For a non-Asian city, its mass transit really is awe-inspiring as are its joined up ‘state-services’ online portal. Overall, it is third placed, behind Singapore and Toronto. RT got their headline because Moscow scored highest for Quality of Life, but low for Environmental Sustainability, and was middling for Equity. (As an aside it was interesting that London scored spectacularly low for Equity, much lower than Moscow or any Global North city). I don’t have time to go more into the details, but here’s my quick take that reiterates some of the themes of this blog over the last few years.

If you have a professional managerial-level job (we can argue about what that means), Moscow has a much higher quality of life than in other European or NA cities. It’s partly because of the capital premium on such salaries that Moscow attracts. But it’s also because service industry jobs are so badly paid by comparison – the people who dry clean your clothes (delivered back to your flat vacuum-wrapped), chauffeur you to work (my friend in a mid-level managerial job for a state corp has his own 24/7 driver), tutor your children in the evening (an acquaintance who owns a not particularly successful medium-sized business employs a cleaner, live-in nanny, cook and three tutors), deliver your groceries, clean your yard and stairway. Then we come to the backbone of Moscow’s growth – housing (and the infrastructure that follows) – dominated by central Asian migrants trapped in a cycle of exploitation and grey-zone legal status, as eloquently explored in the new book by Rustamjon Urinboyev.

a flop house/dosshouse for migrant workers in central Moscow

A much more revealing measure would be to compare the cost of a typical basket of goods for the urban poor and urban rich. In Moscow the contrast is staggering. Again, if you’re in the system and have city residency, you gain benefits not only denied to semi-legal migrant construction workers (who can’t even see a doctor), but denied also to the rest of Russia: subsidized transport and other essential services I wrote about in this post. Discounting components like mass transit, greenspaces and e-governance, this is a story about inequality. A couple of ironies I take away are that the people who live well in Moscow make little use of mass transit, e-governance, or green and public spaces, but their service class does. The wealthy consume a lot, sit in cars in traffic, and leave for the country at the weekend (or even fly abroad). In those senses they don’t differ from those that ‘live well’ elsewhere. I will always be an adoptive Muscovite at heart, although nowadays I spend much more time outside the ring road. Like all other cities I’ve lived in, I have a love-hate relationship with it.  

A much more interesting discussion last week about relative social exclusion and poverty caught my eye because this debate is too often dominated by discussion of money incomes, and not enough space is made for subjective (or what academics call consensual measures of poverty) assessment by a society of ‘enforced lack of necessities’. Like in the rest of Europe, the author of the piece sees social exclusion in the ability to consume things necessary for a ‘normal life’ – high speed internet, access to a computer or smart phone, holidays away from home, extra-curricular activities for school children, savings, access to affordable credit (these are examples the article gives). On these and other measures, 30-40% of Russians are living in poverty. It might be much lower in Moscow, but it’s still significant.

Covid field tales – Part Three: Disinfection and the Smart City

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Disinfection

This is the third of a series of Covid tales, made possible by collaboration with Galina Orlova of HSE Moscow. Each post is about different aspects of lockdown and postlockdown Moscow. These are based on one long text that appeared in the journal City and Society. That journal, thanks to my colleague Derek Pardue, who is editor, has published some amazing Covid despatches – they are open access –  so please check it out. Space in those dispatches is very limited, so here on the blog I will take a little bit more of a circuitous route.

The last post discussed the political economy of lockdown, how City Hall dealt with it and in particular what this reveals about ‘State Capitalism’.

Operation ‘Disinfection’

After the virus transformed the city into a host of hostile surfaces, the Sanitary Service enlightened Muscovites that the infection “can stay in the air for 3 hours, on copper – for 4 hours, up to 24 hours on pulp and paper surfaces (documents, envelopes, folders), for 3-4 days on plastic and metal.” The developing corona-market offers a “cold fog” method of disinfection from 8 roubles per m2. An invitation to the wake of a neighbour dead from Covid, now includes: “Everything is disinfected.”

Public spaces – sidewalks, underpasses, entry-ways – are treated at city expense. The deputy mayor first earmarked 3,500 units of tractor-street sprayers, deploys 4,500. The air hangs with a bleach smell from the long-forgotten Soviet sanitary aromascape while the yellow sanitisers in the metro whiff of the society of consumption and bananas. Muscovites happily use them and discuss whether the big disinfection is comparable to urban beautification programs famous for exorbitant expenses and corruption. And if there isn’t much point in treating open surfaces, as epidemiologists say, should this be recognized as an urban antiviral ritual?

Our entrance-way, which according sanitary doctors remains the most “forgotten place in terms of anti-epidemic measures”, is disinfected twice daily. Bumping into disinfectors in chemical protection suits with spray guns and getting coated by a dose, you realise the danger, and no longer go out without a mask. Someone repeatedly adds in pencil: “unsatisfactory” to the assessment in the disinfection schedule posted by the elevator. The repairman – tired, in a cotton mask slipping down – is also unhappy: the chemicals have damaged electrical contacts, and now the elevator serves only four floors out of twelve. This metonymizes the city in quarantine as an assemblage of relative safety, partial functionality, attempts to reprogram and restore lost connectivity.

4

“Unsatisfactory”. Not in focus. Image by Galina Orlova

Not such a smart lockdown  

Maintaining Moscow’s reputation as a ‘smart city’, City Hall placed its bets on the rapid development of digital control over self-isolation. From April any non-hospitalized infected were obliged to stay at home and install a special mobile app – Social monitoring, developed by the city IT Department. From April 15, Muscovites needed sixteen-digit QR codes to make daily work trips, single emergency trips, and twice-weekly trips for personal and private needs. Police, taxi-drivers and transit workers mobilized to check codes using the Transit Department’s Moscow Assistant app. Regimented timetables of walks were dictated via infographics interfaces. Drones and quadcopters for tracking social distancing in re-opened restaurants were Moscow’s moment to jump the shark.

Jung Won Sonn and colleagues, analyzing the effective use of technology to reduce the risks of a pandemic in South Korea with smart city technologies, conclude that Covid-19 is the first epidemic in history for which humanity living in cities has come up with a ready-made response system.  Aggregating mobile operator data, geolocations of bank transactions and transport cards allows the precise contact tracing, avoiding major quarantine. The researchers regret that countries with developed digital infrastructure – with the exception of South Korea and Taiwan – have not made use of this advantage. (Sonn et al. 2020).

Russia, where during crisis the development of a new platform and apps was preferred, entailing large upfront costs, is a special case. While Yandex – Russia’s Google and the co-owner of popular taxi, delivery and mapping apps, – published a “self-isolation index” using its own digital infrastructure and aggregating big data, City Hall chose to develop apps from scratch. Work requiring months was implemented in weeks with many bugs and inefficient decisions. Lacking auto-verification, QR codes turned Moscow assistants into nurses for an infirm technology. Massive queues formed at metro entrances as policemen were forced to manually input codes to their devices. Technical faults were accompanied by social de(trans)formations, compensatory improvisations, and abuses. When Moscow Assistant could not cope with the flood of requests, QR encounters simulated governing. The cancelling of drivers’ codes without explanation led to the use of “service position” and informal connections to obtain permissions. Ordinary Muscovites with Covid-19 paid for geolocation failures, non-stop selfie requirements, multiple disconnections of the Social Monitoring, developed from fragments of code written in ten days for a pilot project to monitor the transport of domestic waste. Heavy fines, the denial of technical errors by City Hall forced the victims of smart lockdown to unite in the FB-community Fined for getting sick and to complain about the app in court and to Google Play.

Techno-political failures of Moscow lockdown are full of heterogeneities. Repressive Social monitoring is the first manifestation of a biosecurity regime replacing biopolitics. While biopolitics featured authorities’ concern with the life of population, biosecurity is built on the responsibility – including legal – of citizens for their health (Agamben 2020). For Muscovites, fined for getting sick, buggy mobile apps became the real punishment. The incoherence of urban mobility monitoring destroyed the technological continuity of the society of control (Deleuze 1992). To check a QR-code through Moscow Assistant, you need a policeman or a taxi driver in person with a mobile citizen. Taxi drivers tell of the discomfort that arose performing these police duties. The mayor’s office sees voluntary assistance and civic duty in them, but just in case, offers numerous sanctions for those who refuse to help. In a country where civil society is supposedly weak, the prosthetics of digital technologies during lockdown risk not so much strengthening the police state but accelerating the emergence of a “police society”.

In our next post we will move on to ‘Care and Disposal’ and the ‘afterlife’ of the consumption city.

From unequal Russian youth citizenship to caste- and estate-based perspectives?

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I want to revisit the youth topic of my previous post. There, I offered a mild ‘check your privilege’ criticism of the limited perspectives of Muscovite middle-class youth. Additionally, I offered an ‘apology’ for non-politically active or non-‘civically conscious’ young people. I basically said that Muscovites generally have a limited understanding of the lives of non-Muscovites.

One might object that educated Muscovites travel a lot, not only abroad, but also in Russia and develop friendships and acquaintance with people beyond their Moscow ‘set’. I would agree, but then I would add that this only exacerbates the socio-economic ghettoizing of relations. In that, while my young Muscovites develop friendships with, say, middle-class educated Spanish youth in their travels, their attitudes to ‘deep’ Russia still faintly resemble that of a bygone time. Okay, that’s provocative and unfair, but I was very much reminded of the narodniks when talking to some of the more politically active youth. And I mean that in a negative way – there is no consciousness of the need to connect to the majority of youth who may well see inequality as more important than identity politics. Of course, the narodniks failed, but at least they were aware of the divide between the different Russias (as is today’s Natalia Zubarevich).

As for travel in Russia – for many cosmopolitans, this is very much as a foreign tourist in one’s own land. In one case, I had to explain the workings of the Russian railway timetable, and the ‘local’ inevitability of DIY euthanizing unwanted animals, the reasons for limited consumer choice – ‘there is no fancy stuff in the shops because people are poor!’.

To be fair, some cosmopolitan Russians recognise this split all too well, and even discuss it with me. Indeed some of the more embarrassing moments of my fieldwork are when Muscovite Russians tease me about ‘knowing more about the glubinka’ than they do. Or when I am asked sincerely about ‘what the locals think’. There are sensitive, thoughtful people who are aware of the great social divide and try to bridge it in their lives. However, even in my field-site, the real and metaphorically gated communities grow. Frankly, the more I observe this, the more embarrassing it gets. Moreover, the idea of a class of Russians as foreigners in their own land is not new (Decembrists’ failure, partisan war of 1812, etc).

Narodnik

So, why is this important? In the previous post, I also touched on the research I’ve done with colleagues on the ideas of youth citizenship. The mutual incomprehensibility of different Russian youth is no doubt mainly due to socio-economic background. However it indicates an open secret about inequality of citizenship as well. ‘Affective ideas of belonging’ was one way of looking at how frustrated young urban Russians were with their inability to get involved in the political workings of their country. Turning away from insoluble problems is another response. I’m reminded of one of the first times I presented in my old institution in the UK, a Russian colleague approached me afterwards, and with slight hesitation began to question me. Had I not made a mistake in stating that my factory workers in 2009 were only earning 18,000 roubles a month (230 Euro)? Was I exaggerating how little they earned? Later, on social media, a businessman stated that ‘even shop workers’ earned at a minimum 30,000 roubles a month. Clearly he’d never been to a small town, or even a small provincial city. Finally, a couple of years ago, a very senior professor opened her comments to a roundtable with the observation that there was no economic crisis because people in Moscow continued to holiday in Cyprus.

None of my research interlocutors, bar one owns a ‘zagran’ – a tourist passport. To get one would involve taking at least two days off, and travelling to the oblast centre, possibly early in the morning, which is in any case a considerable distance (previously they could travel to the district centre). If a person has been mainly informally employed or self-employed, they may have trouble (or be wary of) filling out the work history form that is required to get a passport. Is it worth discussing ‘affective citizenship’ when the everyday experience of citizenship is so trammelled, or ‘shrinking’, a term sometimes used in a different context to talk about the limited avenues for democratic participation. Shrinking also has relevance when trying to pin down ordinary meanings of citizenship for these same people. Increasingly, people talk about the town, the district, to the exclusion of the national. Their sense of Russianness is localised. Quite ironic given recent focus on the ‘wholeness of Russia’ and increasing use of ‘Russian’ as an ethnic identity marker.

Загран

Finally, all this reminds me of some really interesting research I’ve recently been engaging with – the first is Simon Kordonsky’s on today’s Russia as a kind of caste-based, rather than class-based society. I recently reviewed his English-language book (previous link) for Europe-Asia Studies. I’m now reading some of his Russian sources with my students.

A snippet from the review here:

“Dividing resources among estates is the core process of social life. Crucially, service not labour is the marker of compensation in this system. Therefore classes cannot fully emerge, instead there are non-titular estates of professionals – Kordonsky enjoys provoking the reader in a running joke that lumps scientists, lawyers, and prostitutes in the same category.  Similarly, persons receive estate rent and ‘pay’ estate ‘taxes’ based on their estate position alone. This is why the visible signs of estate membership are so important (think regalia, uniforms, cars with blue-lights); estates makes themselves known to other estates based on ritualised and symbolic practices, leading to widely accepted notions of ‘distributive’, rather than ‘corrective’ justice.”

Recently too, Anna Kruglova’s work has investigated ‘caste’. Presenting at the EASA in Stockholm this year based on research on industrial communities in the Urals she proposes that increasingly workers “get homogenized and ‘compressed’ back to their sosloviie (caste or estate).

Kordonsky’s perspective is pessimistic. Overall he proposes a static, ‘frozen’ system. Is social mobility possible? Can classes with identifiable interests form? While the democratic, market-based society to which Kordonsky opposes Russia is an ideal type, readers may question so stark a differentiation – after all, in the ‘West’, estate-like phenomena such as the increasing significance of unearned income, professional/estate ‘aristocracies’, barriers to social mobility, differential rights, obligations and inequality before the law also feature to various extents. Is it a step too far to think of Russia as a ‘caste’ society when ignoring how socially differentiated our own societies are?