2010 Recipient

The Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies, established in 2008 and sponsored by the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography in the previous calendar year.

Winner: Olga Shevchenko
Title: Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow (Indiana University Press)

Olga Shevchenko’s study of contemporary life in Moscow provides an excellent balance of rich ethnographic research, an insightful theoretical framework, and engaging writing. She integrates many different aspects of urban life during this period, and offers the kind of ethnographic breadth and depth that is difficult to achieve in urban ethnographies. Her identification of “total crisis” as the defining feature of post-socialist life structures a fascinating analysis of the seemingly contradictory narratives and choices of the people she portrays through lively descriptions and skillful incorporation of different modes of research. Shevchenko invites the reader into everyday life in Moscow and offers insights into how people navigate the complicated world in which extended crisis becomes lived reality.

Honorable Mentions: Bruce Grant and Douglas Rogers