Village as a discursive space: The political study of a non-political community

Discourse analysis in both its theory and practice is traditionally concerned with politics. The sphere of the non-political rarely attracts attention of the researchers. It appears to be invisible to discourse theorists and unprivileged in empirical studies of discourse. This article aims at filling this gap. With the example of a Russian village it dwells on the discursive organisation of rural communities whose radically “personalised” world resists traditional approaches to political logic and suggests different modes of relations, agency, and power. Keywords: village; rural communities; Russia; discourse analysis; and non-political