Mühlfried, Florian and Sergey Sokolovskiy (eds.): Exploring the Edge of Empire - Soviet Era Anthropology in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Münster: LIT (2012) (original) (raw)
All too often, Western scholars studying the Caucasus and Central Asia show a striking disinterest in, and occasionally even distaste for, knowledge generated locally. The anthropology of the Soviet era is often dismissed in toto as a fabrication of communist ideology and/or a purely descriptive and anti-theoretical endeavour. These assumptions greatly hinder communication between regional experts and between disciplinary specialists. This book is an attempt to overcome this problem by re-evaluating Soviet an-thropological work in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The contributors include scholars from these regions as well as others from Western countries. In addition to authors with first-hand experiences of Soviet era anthropology, the volume presents the voices of several younger scholars, as their reflections on the discipline's past will matter for its future in the regions. The book is divided into five parts. The first part is devoted to the general framework of socialist anthropology in the Caucasus and Central Asia and scrutinizes relations between Soviet academic centres and peripheries. The second part deals with studies of collective farms and engagements with modernity in post-Stalinist Soviet anthropology. In the third part, two interviews with key "participant observers" and leading contributors to Soviet and post-Soviet anthropology bring in first-hand experiences and personal reflections. The final two parts of this book present the making of national schools of ethnography and related sciences in the Cau-casus, followed by explorations of the contributions of some outstanding individuals and the institutional and/or political constraints within which they worked in Central Asia. The topics range from discussion of the legacy of Soviet-era anthropology and application of theories of ethnos and so-called survivals to the impact of disciplinary traditions stemming from pre-Soviet times. The chapters bring out striking differences between the two large regions considered; they also draw attention to variation within these regions, and between different sub-disciplines of anthropology. The intricate histories of local research traditions subjected to strict controls contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which the social sciences interact with ideology. Chronologically, the book spans the whole epoch of the Soviet-style anthropology from its inception in the 1920s to its aftermath in a new century.
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In March 2009, the Chicago-based sociologist and fervent advocate of world systems theory Giorgi Derluguian gave a talk at the Georgian State University on 'How not to Stay Provincial'. Although Derluguian referred to the 'state of advanced social science' in general, we consider it no pure coincidence that he chose this title in a place like Tbilisi and in a country like Georgia. It is hard to disagree that, whatever we do as social scientists, we should not be provincial but rather cosmopolitan, addressing the important, timely issues and conversing with dominant theoretical discourses in our works. This seems to be all the more true in the field of regional sciences, which, according to some, are in decline or even in crisis, not least because of their inherent demand for specialization. So here we have the claim that if we want to know something about a region like the Caucasus or Central Asia, we should be guided by the dominant concerns of contemporary social science. This claim is put forward not only by social scientists like Derlugiuan but also by local students. At Tbilisi State University, for example, social anthropology students are eager to become acquainted with the main paradigms of social and cultural anthropology , and many of these students advocate their potential as explanatory tools for their own societies. They are thirsty for theory and hungry for methodology. This appetite for theory and method is often accompanied by a striking disinterest in, and occasionally even distaste for, knowledge generated locally and more than twenty years ago. In the case of Western scholars studying the Caucasus and Central Asia, this disinterest seems to be based on the following assumptions: reading texts by locals is time-consuming, demands a great deal of language proficiency, and the content of these works is oftentimes completely out of fashion. In the case of local students and some younger scholars, Soviet academic traditions are often dismissed in toto. Soviet anthropology in particular is often regarded as being of no value.
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This collection explores theoretical and empirical developments in the anthropology of the Caucasus and Central Asia, originating in or shaped by the Soviet era. Special attention is paid to the creation of local and national schools as well as to the role of institutional and biographical dis/continuities. Within the academic field of anthropology in the Soviet republics, Russia-based research institutes and regional branches of the former Soviet Academy of Sciences played a special role. Explorations of this role and of the impact of ideology are pertinent to the controversial question as to whether the Soviet Union was essentially a colonial enterprise. The authors include leading anthropologists from the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as regional specialists from the Russian Federation and western countries. Florian Mühlfried is an anthropologist working for the Caucasus Studies Program at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. Sergey Sokolovskiy is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and editor-in-chief of the journal Etnograficheskoe obozrenie. http://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/3-643-90177-4
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