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In 1988, I received a three-year grant to do research for the Dr. Philos. degree at the University of Oslo, with 12 months' fieldwork in San Francisco and several shorter stays in Russia – resulting in a comparative study of Soviet and American public culture. In the meantime, the Soviet Union was busy disintegrating, the accompanying economic crisis destroying many people's lives. In the US, the conditions I witnessed seemed either incompatible with my Soviet data or (on alternate days) in too-total correspondence with them. Such problems conspired with the insane ambitions of the project itself and the ethical problems my field research involved me in – to convince me that the project had to be shelved. There is still a possibility that I may return to it, but in the meantime I am publishing parts of the existing manuscript that I judge may be of interest for a broader audience than myself. At first, only Chapters 1 and 2 are offered.

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Table of contents

Introduction [Draft]

Chapter 1: Concentric contexts

Chapter 2: Playing reality

Chapter 3: Landscapes of power

Chapter 4: Territoriality and the nation state

Chapter 5: The Logic of Collage

Rather than a conclusion

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