“Lady Macbeth of the Little Russian District”: the Power and Norms of Everyday Life in the Empire of Modern Times

Abstract. The article is based on the results of anthropological analysis of investigative materials. It is devoted to the reconstruction of the normative order of everyday life of Little Russian inhabitants, merchants and townspeople of the city of Chernigov at the beginning of the 19th century. As a result of the analysis, the effect of reconfiguration of social relations in the city is shown, due to the invasion of the traditional world of the Old Order by the imperial institutions of the New Age, the police and medicine. The conflicts in which the residents of Chernigov were involved and which influenced their vision of events and shaped their subjectivities, which determined their ability to act at a critical moment, are shown. The focus is on the period preceding the emergence of a new public sphere within the society of the Old Order, defined in the concept of J. Habermas as an important marker of the transition to the New Time. We consider the level of norms, rules and cultural practices of social actors facing the challenges of the new rationality produced by the Enlightenment, gaining greater freedom in private life, but experiencing the tension of the inertia of old normative systems.

Keywords: Ukraine, merchants culture, historical anthropology, microhistory, history of everyday life.