Abstracts
Russia on Edge: Reclaiming the Periphery in Contemporary Russian Culture
Interdisciplinary Workshop, 11-12 December 2009 (CRASSH, University of Cambridge)
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University of Aberdeen
Native Ethnic Identity in Siberia: From a Bird's Eye View
Ideas about ethnic identities in Siberia are strongly shaped by the power relations between the European Russian centre and the Siberian/Asian frontier, in other words, between modern urban metropolis and remote rural village life. Subsequently, perceptions differ; the native people's prospect towards city life is education, business and political activism; in contrast, agents of urban centres are intruding on the periphery and homelands of indigenous people with economic projects and governmental development projects.
This asymmetric power relation has led to a different understanding of local identities, and ethnic identity has become an important symbolic capital in the power struggles between centre and periphery. The predominant image of local identities in the Russian public is that of monolithic nationalities, but it cannot keep up with the new identity processes. With the abandonment of distinctly Soviet nationality policies and the rapid post-modern development of blending various lifestyles, dynamic identity processes have arisen. If we view native cultures from the perspective of optional lifestyles (as a new program of the Siberian Studies Centre at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology has recently suggested), we might transcend the solid borders between centre and periphery.
This polarisation between the one-dimensional symbolic representation of ethnic groups and the dynamic bricolage of local identities will be discussed along with my fieldwork experiences from the Middle Yenisei.