On the Evolution of the Northwest Coast Indian Communities (A Soviet-American Discussion and Its Sequel)

The article is devoted to the discussion among Soviet and U.S. scholars about the social organization of the Indians of the Northwest Coast of North America. In the classic textbooks on “primitive history”, the Indians of this region—the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian and Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl)—are mentioned as examples of a high degree of social differentiation based on a (fishing and maritime) foraging economy and even as instances of pre-state structures. The proposed concepts were, to varying degrees, determined by external factors: personal political views, high-profile events, or government pressure. In 1897, Franz Boas recognized the potlatch ceremony—demonstrative exchanges of gifts and destructions of surplus, a practice exotic to Europeans—as an analogue of a credit operation. This interpretation, not empirically substantiated, originated from a public campaign to legalize potlatch. In the 1930s, Julia Averkieva, a Soviet intern of Boas, interpreted some fragments of her mentor’s teaching through the Marxist class theory framework, shifting the emphasis from potlatch to slavery: the Northwest Indians allegedly began the transition to slavery from a classless system in which the potlatch was an instrument for preserving property equality. Averkieva’s interpretation became canonical in the USSR, whilst also finding some reception outside the socialist camp. In the United States, relativistic cultural interpretations dominated; domestic evolutionary Marxist models were marginal and were not rooted in the Soviet tradition. However, after the collapse of the USSR, they also became part of the research mainstream, being criticized not only from the right, but also from the left—from anarchist viewpoints.

A Review of Małgorzata Mastalerz-Krystjańczuk, “Ostatni Mohikanie Pomorza”: Ludność rodzima znad jezior Łebsko i Gardno w publicystyce polskiej lat 1945–1989. Gdańsk; Słupsk: Instytut Kaszubski; Akademia Pomorska w Słupsku, 2019, 452 ss.

The collection of articles “The Last Mohicans of Pomerania”: The Indigenous Population of Łebsko and Gardno Lakes in Polish Nonfiction 1945–1989, edited by contemporary Polish historian Małgorzata Mastalerz-Krystjańczuk, includes several dozen articles published in Polish newspapers and magazines from 1945 to 1989 dedicated to the Kashubian ethnographic group of Slovincians who lived in Poland until the 1970s. The post-war nonfiction, written by professional ethnographers, linguists, historians, as well as journalists, travelers and social activists, was intended to acquaint the Polish reader with the specificities of the small indigenous ethnic group of Pomerania, fully incorporated into Poland as a result of the Second World War. An extensive preface by Dr. Mastalerz-Krystjańczuk will allow the reader to learn about the specificities of the inclusion of Slovincians in Polish social and political life, the historical and cultural context in which the texts about Slovincians were created, their thematic content, as well as the role played by censorship on the practice of depicting modern Slovincians. As the materials of the collection show, Slovincians had taken a specific position in Polish scientific and political ethno-classifications. Being German-speaking Lutherans, the Slovincians—due to their Slavic origin and the expected Slavic language practice—had to play the role of an important argument in legitimizing West Pomerania’s inclusion in the imagination of the Polish authorities. The review provides a brief survey of the main themes, images, and stories about Slovincians circulating in numerous articles of this collection.

Alexander Grigoryevich Kozintsev: On the Occasion of His 75th Birthday

Laudation to Alexander Grigoryevich Kozintsev on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

Shamans, Bureaucrats, and Their Cosmologies: Local Religious Organisations in Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region

Over the course of the last 18 years, shamans in Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region have started to register “local religious organizations”. This development has transformed shamanism itself whilst also forcing the Ministry of Justice to articulate whether shamanism could be considered a religion. The article describes this process as an interactive loop: the classifiable (shamans) responds to the process of classification (state registration) and then changes that classification. The study hinges on two findings. First, the differences in the structure of shamanic organizations lead them to create fundamentally different ways of describing the world (classification systems). Secondly, some of these classifications align more closely with the language of the state. The author builds on the “grid and group” model by Mary Douglas, which is subsequently augmented with conceptual insights from Bernstein and Collins. The model makes it possible to highlight three types of organizations that respond differently to the language of state classification. The study is based on empirical data (40 interviews and participant observation) collected by the author during an expedition to Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region between December 2019 and January 2020.

Whole Parts: Transnational Life Histories of the Archives of Sergei and Elizaveta Shirokogoroff

What does an anthropologist’s archive look like? Where is it located? And is the anthropology of archives important for the understanding of anthropological thinking today? Here we answer these questions by analysing the various life histories of the archival fragments of one of the most puzzling and influential anthropologists in the history of Russian and Soviet anthropology: Sergei Mikhailovich Shirokogoroff (1887–1939). Shirokogoroff is credited as being one of the authors of the etnos theory — one of the main instruments of identity politics in Russia, China, Germany and also, in part, Japan and South Africa. The transnational life histories of Shirokogoroff and his wife Elizaveta [Elizabeth] Nikolaevna (1884–1943), and of their ideas, suggests a conception of the archive not as a single whole, but instead as a collection of forgotten, hidden, obliterated, or, on the other hand, scrupulously preserved fragments. These fragments are not centred in one place or organized around any one reading, but they nevertheless represent “partial connections”. Moreover, as we can see today with hindsight, none of these archival fragments lay inert. They have been intertwined in local political and social ontologies. Our text has an autoethnograpic quality. While illustrating separate episodes from the life of the Shirokogoroffs we also will tell of our search for the manuscripts through which we were forced onto strange paths and encounters. These greatly deepened our understanding both of the life of documents and their material links to the lives of researchers. Our article is an attempt to illustrate this complex picture which, in the end, will allow us to conclude that we have only just begun to understand the workings of the anthropologist’s archive in the history of anthropological thought.

Yuri Evgenyevich Berezkin: On the Occasion of His 75th Birthday

Laudation to Yuri Evgenyevich Berezkin on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

A Review of S. B. Adonyeva (ed.), Disaster Rituals: Anthropological Essays. St Petersburg: The Propp Center, 2020, 208 pp. (Primary Signs, or Pragmemes)

This collective monograph examines the disaster rituals of the Russian countryside, in particular the rituals performed during epidemics and epizootics, as well as during village fires. The authors use not only published sources, but also their own notes taken during expeditions into the territory of the Russian North-West. Chronologically, the studies cover the period from the mid-17th century to the present, but most attention is paid to data from the mid-19th century to the first third of the 20th century. The book attempts to develop a general theory of disaster rituals using the ideas of Emile Durkheim, Pitirim Sorokin, Victor Turner, and Mircea Eliade. The reviewer notes the value of the empirical material—which is being introduced to science for the first time—but expresses opposition to some of the authors’ observations. In particular, he criticizes the attempt to apply the methodological toolkit developed by Victor Turner in his description of the Isoma ritual of the African Ndembu people to this new material. With this approach, the rites of different peoples are not actually compared to each other, but are characterized together in such a way that the characteristics of one rite are ascribed to another. As a result of this paradoxical meta-description, Vologda rituals appear to resemble the African Isoma, although in fact they have little to nothing in common with it.

A Review of Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Juan Javier Rivera Andía (eds.), Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 282 pp.

The reviewed book is one of the few anthropological studies of encounters of indigenous and “Western” ontologies in the resource-dependent economies of South America. Using qualitative methods—primarily field observation—the authors demonstrate the inadequacy of perceiving the interactions between indigenous communities and extractive companies only as a conflict. The review shows how the structural organization of most chapters makes it possible to imagine the relationship between capitalist and indigenous worlds as being much more complex and not corresponding to the romanticized image of an “authentic Indian”. In addition to its academic significance, the reviewer draws attention to a practical aspect: how the problematization of ontological differences contributes to the implementation of industrial and infrastructure projects that can have an impact on indigenous communities. At the same time, the review also demonstrates some inconsistencies that occur either throughout the book or in separate chapters. These include, for example, the isolation of the positions of non-indigenous actors, the unintentional reproduction of stereotypical ideas about indigenous communities, the lack of historical context for the categorization of South American societies on the basis of indigeneity. The authors’ innovative understanding of extractivism as a model of value extraction opens up new possible scenarios for the research of indigenous ontologies in the context of global capitalism.

The Armenian Factor in the Formation of a Yezidi Identity, or: Who Is “Inventing” the Yezidis?

The article deals with the problems of ethnic and religious identity of the Yezidis who have been traditionally classified as Kurds but have increasingly disassociated themselves from them in recent years. This development was reflected in post-Soviet censuses in Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, where the vast majority of Yezidis defined their ethnic identity as Yezidi rather than Kurdish. In Kurdish studies, the process of separating Yezidis from Kurds has also traditionally been associated exclusively with the policies of the Armenian authorities, particularly in the context of the national and ideological role of Armenian scholars in the Armenian-Kurdish discourse. However, the article shows that the ethnicization of the Yezidis is a general trend in the Yezidi community, regardless of the factor of Armenia. The author claims that it is the attitude of the Kurdish-Muslim community towards the Yezidis in their historical homeland—in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan—that is a predictor of the Yezidi identity. This was most clearly seen after the ISIS attack on the Yezidi populated area in Sinjar (Northern Iraq) in August 2014, as a result of which thousands of Yezidi men were executed, and the captured Yezidi women enslaved. These events are understood by the Yezidis within the framework of the Yezidi-Kurdish relations, since the Kurdish armed forces—which had guaranteed the security of the Yezidis and protection from ISIS—unexpectedly withdrew their troops from Sinjar shortly before the terrorist attacks. This led to an increase in anti-Kurdish sentiments in the Yezidi community.

A Discussion between Quebecois Social Anthropologists and Historians

The article examines the debate between Quebecois anthropologists and historians around the “disparationist” thesis. According to this thesis, first expressed in several 17th century texts, the Attikamegues and Montagnais peoples had completely disappeared by the end of that century due to epidemics and Iroquois raids, and the territories in which they lived were occupied by alien autochthonous groups. Therefore, the modern Innu and Atikamekw are implied not to be the direct descendants of the people who lived here before the arrival of Europeans. Anthropologists criticize this thesis, stressing intergenerational continuity. They see it as a political notion that denies the indigenous rights of the First Nations. The author examines the critical arguments of the anthropologists and tries to reveal the relationship between the political implications of the problem and its purely scientific component. From his point of view, the “disparationist” thesis does not take into account the mobility and the relatively amorphous social structure of taiga hunters, in which even the replacement of some groups by others does not imply a break in continuity.