Russian Cultural Anthropology after the Collapse of Communism

Russian Cultural Anthropology after the Collapse of Communism PDF Author: Albert Baiburin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136297286
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In Soviet times, anthropologists in the Soviet Union were closely involved in the state’s work of nation building. They helped define official nationalities, and gathered material about traditional customs and suitably heroic folklore, whilst at the same time refraining from work on the reality of contemporary Soviet life. Since the end of the Soviet Union anthropology in Russia has been transformed. International research standards have been adopted, and the focus of research has shifted to include urban culture and difficult subjects, such as xenophobia. However, this transformation has been, and continues to be, controversial, with, for example, strongly contested debates about the relevance of Western anthropology and cultural theory to post-Soviet reality. This book presents an overview of how anthropology in Russia has changed since Soviet times, and showcases examples of important Russian anthropological work. As such, the book will be of great interest not just to Russian specialists, but also to anthropologists more widely, and to all those interested in the way academic study is related to prevailing political and social conditions.

Russian Cultural Anthropology after the Collapse of Communism

Russian Cultural Anthropology after the Collapse of Communism PDF Author: Albert Baiburin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136297286
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Soviet times, anthropologists in the Soviet Union were closely involved in the state’s work of nation building. They helped define official nationalities, and gathered material about traditional customs and suitably heroic folklore, whilst at the same time refraining from work on the reality of contemporary Soviet life. Since the end of the Soviet Union anthropology in Russia has been transformed. International research standards have been adopted, and the focus of research has shifted to include urban culture and difficult subjects, such as xenophobia. However, this transformation has been, and continues to be, controversial, with, for example, strongly contested debates about the relevance of Western anthropology and cultural theory to post-Soviet reality. This book presents an overview of how anthropology in Russia has changed since Soviet times, and showcases examples of important Russian anthropological work. As such, the book will be of great interest not just to Russian specialists, but also to anthropologists more widely, and to all those interested in the way academic study is related to prevailing political and social conditions.

Civil Society, Social Change, and a New Popular Education in Russia

Civil Society, Social Change, and a New Popular Education in Russia PDF Author: W. John Morgan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134625685
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Civil Society, Social Change and a New Popular Education in Russia is a detailed account of contemporary issues that draws upon recent survey research conducted by the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as from secondary published work in both Russian and English. The book explores how social change and developments in civil society are occurring in Russia and the role played by a new popular education. The right to lifelong learning is guaranteed by the Russian state, as it was by the Soviet Union, where formal education, based on communist ideology, emphasised the needs of the state over those of individuals. In practice a wide range of educational needs, many of which relate to coping with changing economic, social and technological circumstances, are being met by non-governmental providers, including commercial companies, self-help groups, and community and neighbourhood clubs. This book discusses how this new popular education is both an example of developing civil society and stimulates its further development. However, as the book points out, it is also part of a growing educational divide, where motivated, articulate people take advantage of new opportunities, while disadvantaged groups such as the unemployed and the rural poor continue to be excluded.

Russian Composers Abroad

Russian Composers Abroad PDF Author: Elena Dubinets
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253057809
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
As waves of composers migrated from Russia in the 20th century, they grappled with the complex struggle between their own traditions and those of their adopted homes. Russian Composers Abroad explores the self-identity of these émigrés, especially those who left from the 1970s on, and how aspects of their diasporic identities played out in their music. Elena Dubinets provides a journey through the complexities of identity formation and cultural production under globalization and migration, elucidating sociological perspectives of the post-Soviet world that have caused changes in composers' outlooks, strategies, and rankings. Russian Composers Abroad is an illuminating study of creative ideas that are often shaped by the exigencies of financing and advancement rather than just by the vision of the creators and the demands of the public.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 PDF Author: Alena Ledeneva
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1800086148
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 669

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Book Description
For a post-human hitchhiker, human life – with its anxiety, ageing, illness and constant need for problem-solving – may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by human touch, human emotion and human cooperation. The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 continues the journey of the two previous volumes into the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices. It focuses on issues of emotional ambivalence and pressures of the digital age. The informal practices presented in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and the need to tackle the central problem of modern societies – uncertainty. The volume takes a reader on a ‘biographical’ journey through elusive, taken-for-granted or banal ways of getting things done from over 70 countries and world regions. It offers innovative understanding of the significance of fringes, and challenges the assumption that informality is associated exclusively with poverty, underdevelopment, the Global South, oppressive regimes or the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also maps the patterns of informality around the globe; identifies specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way; and documents their ambivalent impact on people engaged in problem-solving, on societies in which these problems arise, and on humanity overall. Praise for The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 ‘This book tells a story of human cooperation. It is not the narrative you’ll find in books teaching you how to solve problems. It is an assemblage of something much more endemic, fundamentally human, and much more pervasive than we tend to think of informality. It involves money and power, but also the alternative currencies of gaining advantage or gaming the system.’ Bruce Schneier, author of A Hacker's Mind ‘Alena Ledeneva’s latest database of rule bending is a goldmine for documentary makers and storytellers. Entries from 70 countries, covering a human lifespan from Chinese “anchor babies” to funeral feasts in Azerbaijan, offer remarkable insights into the way the world really works.’ Lucy Ash, journalist

A Race for the Future

A Race for the Future PDF Author: Marina Mogilner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674290070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The forgotten story of a surprising anti-imperial, nationalist project at the turn of the twentieth century: a grassroots movement of Russian Jews to racialize themselves. In the rapidly nationalizing Russian Empire of the late nineteenth century, Russian Jews grew increasingly concerned about their future. Jews spoke different languages and practiced different traditions. They had complex identities and no territorial homeland. Their inability to easily conform to new standards of nationality meant a future of inevitable assimilation or second-class minority citizenship. The solution proposed by Russian Jewish intellectuals was to ground Jewish nationhood in a structure deeper than culture or territory—biology. Marina Mogilner examines three leading Russian Jewish race scientists— Samuel Weissenberg, Alexander El’kind, and Lev Shternberg—and the movement they inspired. Through networks of race scientists and political activists, Jewish medical societies, and imperial organizations like the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population, they aimed to produce “authentic” knowledge about the Jewish body, which would motivate an empowering sense of racially grounded identity and guide national biopolitics. Activists vigorously debated eugenic and medical practices, Jews’ status as Semites, Europeans, and moderns, and whether the Jews of the Caucasus and Central Asia were inferior. The national science, and the biopolitics it generated, became a form of anticolonial resistance, and survived into the early Soviet period, influencing population policies in the new state. Comprehensive and meticulously researched, A Race for the Future reminds us of the need to historically contextualize racial ideology and politics and makes clear that we cannot fully grasp the biopolitics of the twentieth century without accounting for the imperial breakdown in which those politics thrived.

Culture and History in the Pacific

Culture and History in the Pacific PDF Author: Jukka Siikala
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
ISBN: 9523690477
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Culture and History in the Pacific is a collection of essays originally published in 1990. The texts explore from different perspectives the question of culture as a repository of historical information. They also address broader questions of anthropological writing at the time, such as the relationship between anthropologists’ representations and local conceptions. This republication aims to make the book accessible to a wider audience, and in the region it discusses, Oceania. A new introductory essay has been included to contextualize the volume in relation to its historical setting, the end of the Cold War era, and to the present study of the Pacific and indigenous scholarship. The authors of Culture and History in the Pacific include prominent anthropologists of the Pacific, some of whom – Roger Keesing and Marilyn Strathern, to name but two – have also been influential in the anthropology of the late 20th and early 21st century in general.

Reforming Social Sciences, Humanities and Higher Education in Eastern Europe and CIS after 1991

Reforming Social Sciences, Humanities and Higher Education in Eastern Europe and CIS after 1991 PDF Author: Olga Breskaya
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443862940
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This volume consists of articles prepared after two conferences organized by the European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2011 and in 2012. The focus of both conferences was concentrated on the development of reforms and changes in higher education in the social sciences and humanities in Eastern Europe during the last two decades. The collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe was followed by the enormous expansion of institutions of higher learning, especially in the ...

Race and Racism in Russia

Race and Racism in Russia PDF Author: N. Zakharov
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113748120X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Race and Racism in Russia identifies the striking changes in racial ideas, practices, exclusions and violence in Russia since the 1990s, revealing how 'Russianness' has become a synonym for racial whiteness. This ground-breaking book provides new theories and substantive insights into race and ethnicity in a Russian context.

Russia

Russia PDF Author: Petra Rethmann
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442636602
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
This book offers a brief introduction to the anthropological study of Russia. Moving beyond the conceptual iron curtain that has divided past study of Russia into "East" and "West," it situates Russia in a global context and provides readers with all of the necessary analytical tools for understanding the complex cultural and social configurations of the contemporary Russian Federation. Based on extensive fieldwork in Russia, it offers unique insights into a number of cultural configurations—including socialism, violence, mythology, colonialism, nationalism, gender, memory, democracy, media, and art. Through the use of interesting case studies and ethnographic "snapshots," the author has produced a lively and engaging overview of Russia’s cultural meaning and significance.

Advancing Folkloristics

Advancing Folkloristics PDF Author: Jesse A. Fivecoate
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253057116
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
An unprecedented number of folklorists are addressing issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality in academic and public spaces in the US, raising the question: How can folklorists contribute to these contemporary political affairs? Since the nature of folkloristics transcends binaries, can it help others develop critical personal narratives? Advancing Folkloristics covers topics such as queer, feminist, and postcolonial scholarship in folkloristics. Contributors investigate how to apply folkloristic approaches in nonfolklore classrooms, how to maintain a folklorist identity without a "folklorist" job title, and how to use folkloristic knowledge to interact with others outside of the discipline. The chapters, which range from theoretical reorientations to personal experiences of folklore work, all demonstrate the kinds of work folklorists are well-suited to and promote the areas in which folkloristics is poised to expand and excel. Advancing Folkloristics presents a clear picture of folklore studies today and articulates how it must adapt in the future.