Bio: (1930-2020) Russian-British sociologist. Teodor Shanin was born in Russia, and after the end of the Second World War, he moved to Israel, where he completed his undergraduate studies. In 1963, he went to Great Britain and received his doctorate from the University of Birmingham. He has taught at the universities of Sheffield, Haifa (Israel), and Manchester. Shanin is known for studying rural societies, the history of the Russian Revolution, the informal economy, and the development of African societies. He contributed a lot to the development of two sociological sub-disciplines, rural sociology, and historical sociology.

In the books Peasants and Peasant Society (1971) and The Awkward Class (1972), Shanin researched peasants and their economy. In his opinion, the peasants have a completely different economic structure than capitalist and socialist economies. The way the peasants work, eat, and live is based on what he calls the "informal economy", which consists of a network of family, informal and, often, even criminal activities. Both classical and Marxist economists have rejected this type of economy as marginal, but Shanin notes that half of the world's population functions in this type of economy. Shanin traveled a lot around the world in order to study the life and economy of peasant societies qualitatively. His most significant contribution to historical sociology is the study of the civil revolution in Russia in the book Russia 1905-07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth (1986).

Main works

Peasants and Peasant Society (1971);

The Awkward Class (1972);

Russia 1905-07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth (1986);

Defining Peasants (1990).