“Everybody Is an Oil-industry Worker Here”: Discursive-Symbolic Production and Contestation of Intra-city Inequality in а Northern Single-industry Town

Abstract

The article analyzes the phenomenon of intra-city inequality under the rule of city-forming enterprises in the northern single-industry (oil) town by employing R. Brubaker’s cognitive-linguistic version of social constructivism. The “capital” of the LUKOIL Oil Company — Kogalym (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Yugra) — was chosen as a research focus. The mechanisms of production and contestation of intra-city inequality in Kogalym are analyzed based on complex historical-field research data. The corporate imageineering (Ch. Rutheiser’s term) of Kogalym, ritual aspects of the town culture, as well as various discursive frameworks of the town’s selfpresentation are considered. We focus our attention on the complex social antagonism between oil workers and non-oil workers; we investigate its causes and dynamics, specifically, through the case of the transformation of the Kogalym Day celebration. We conclude that — in the context of a single-industry town — the cultural hegemony of the dominant group is ensured through closely related practices: the corporate unification of the cultural landscape of the town, consolidation of the dominant group’s point of view in the local historical narrative, reframing of the professional holiday of the dominant group as town-wide, official holiday commemorations, and gift rituals. The grassroot frustration on the part of the excluded is manifested in the form of a folklore reaction to the symbols of the “dominant” group, the creation of a historical narrative and places of memory alternative to the official canon. At the same time, the specific life cycle of the northern single-industry town’s population considerably diminishes its cultural diversity.