Viktor Shnirelman, Sergei Panarin. Lev Gumilev: His Ргеtensions as Founder of Ethnology and his Eurasian Theories (original) (raw)
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Past and Future Path of Russian Ethnology: A Personal View in a Global Perspective
Tishkov, V. A. Past and Future Path of Russian Ethnology: A Personal View in a Global Perspective // Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – 2021. – Vol. 91. – No 2. – P. 118-132., 2021
An overview of trends in Russian academic ethnology over the past three decades is provided. This is an analysis of the state of the discipline from the inside, from the point of view of the author, who has been at the center of the scientific and public life of the country for all these years and who, as the director of the RAS Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, influenced academic strategy and institutional changes. This is also a view on Russian national ethnology in the context of epistemological shifts and disciplinary changes that have taken place in world sociocultural anthropology and ethnology. The main provisions of this article concern intradisciplinary inertia and the difficult revision of the Soviet legacy; the restrictive impact of dominant public practices on the choice of metatheoretical constructs such as social constructivism in culturally complex societies; the influence of the ideology and practice of ethno-nationalism on the scientific community and the resultant "postcolonial" or aboriginal anthropology; and the combination of ethnographic tradition and new directions in the search for cultural similarities as the antithesis to the traditional obsession with establishing differences. The article analyzes the nation-building project based on a multiethnic civil nation as one of the prospects for the anthropological vision of Russia and the place of scientists in this project. The author evaluates the post-Soviet period as one of the most fruitful in the history of Russian ethnology in terms of the formation of new trends, thematic repertoire, and geography of research.
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.
Obŝestvo: filosofiâ, istoriâ, kulʹtura, 2024
Аннотация. В статье исследуются проблемы определения этноса и этнической идентификации. Рассматривается аргументация С.М. Широкогорова, в которой раскрываются полное понятие этноса и различия каждого этноса (народа) в плане как происхождения, так и культуры. Представлены особенности методологии отечественных ученых советского периода, ставивших целью использовать понятие этноса как поведенческую категорию и отождествлявших термины «этнос» и «нация». Кроме того, проводится сопоставление этнологических концепций М.И. Артамонова, Ю.В. Бромлея, Л.Н. Гумилева и С.М. Широкогорова. При осмыслении понятия этнической идентификации устанавливается разграничение терминов «нация» и «этнос». В качестве доказательства различий этноса и нации используется термин «гаплогруппа», который, в свою очередь, демонстрирует генетическую особенность каждого этноса. Приводятся аргументы в форме генетических исследований, языка и мифологических сказаний, чтобы установить обособленность одних этносов от других народов в связи с их особыми культурой и традициями.
2011
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
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.
This paper analyzes the sources of the author’s field research, revealing the mechanisms of development of Siberian, Russian, and other Slavic peoples. Settlers in new ethnoecological systems changed the tradition of life support as well as the spiritual component of life: new places were assigned new geographical names (toponyms), and the old Turkic or Ugric names were conceptualized in terms of the Russian language and national outlook. In the process of the development of Siberia, East Slavic peoples and ethnic groups used their adaptive capabilities and their defense mechanisms. In order to harmonize the interaction between man and nature they used the rational and irrational knowledge of astronomical phenomena, flora and fauna, weather, and other natural phenomena which the settlers brought with them from Russia, and which were in demand in the new environment. However, the apocalyptic notions of doomsday as a grand environmental and spiritual catastrophe of humanity seems to remain consistently among the Siberian peasantry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY IN RUSSIA: conference paper
International Congress, Madrid, 2008
Russian anthropology takes its roots in folklore studies, on the one hand, and various applied ethnographic cum geographic research motivated to a substantial degree by colonial expansion and military effort, on the other. However, though this heritage is still strongly felt, it has been supplemented by other components in subsequent periods of the discipline's development.