Five Ways to Conceptualize the Void (Bliakher L.E., Grigorichev K.V., Kovalevsky A.V. Life in the Void: Anthropological Essays on Social Space beyond Governmental Regulation. Moscow: Khamovniki Social Research Support Foundation; Common Place, 2024)

This work is a review of the monograph “Life in the Void” by Leonid Bliakher, Konstantin Grigorichev and Andrey Kovalevsky, which is based on a series of expeditions to the northern parts of the Irkutsk region, located in the upper Lena River. The subject of the authors’ research interest is the organization of life in the territories that have undergone the so-called spatial compression. Drawing on the information and data that have been collected during the expeditions, they document the formation of a new space and a new society in the “void” left after compression, which is different from the “big world” with its routine communications and social hierarchies. The book represents an unusually light reading given its scientific nature. The seriousness of the research concept and scientific goals chimes with a simple dynamic style, sometimes approaching the style of fiction narratives. In the eyes of an amateur reader, the timeline of the expeditions that the book is based on, descriptions, photographs and maps of the places where these expeditions took place, to a certain extent obscure the author's hypotheses and theoretical explications, pushing them into the background. However, according to the reviewer, the stylistic features of the book do not cancel out its scientific significance.