The Wanderers in Shanghai: Russian Fine Art and Hegemonic Meta-Capital in World Politics

This article analyses a Russian art exhibition organised in China in 2017–2018. How did The Wanderers, which arguably represents social criticism, become a heteronomous site of capital accumulation and conversion, and what role did it play in Russia’s status-seeking power pursuits? To answer these research questions, the article focuses on the central forms of capital related to the exhibition. The research data consist of semi-structured interviews and fieldwork in Shanghai. The article’s theoretical-methodological framework is founded on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and the field-theoretic account of hegemonic order theory by Daniel Nexon and Iver Neumann.