Suchergebnisse

Siberia is a vast and varied region, linked horizontally to the circumpolar Arctic and vertically to Mongolia and Central Asia. Nineteenth-century anthropological fieldwork was important abroad, particularly in America. From the 1920 to 1980s, Siberia was almost totally isolated from outside research and from comparative anthropology. However, Soviet anthropologists conducted lengthy fieldwork, producing a huge corpus of valuable material in Russian. Their questions were specific to their ideological situation, for example placing indigenous peoples in a Marxist evolutionary framework, and during the 1930s, many suffered imprisonment and execution. Topics became more sociological in the 1960s, and when the region opened to foreigners around 1990, a new wave of young researchers conducted long-term fieldwork, producing a flourishing new literature in English and shifting the emphasis from historical reconstruction to current issues. Topics in this new literature include the state, agency, modernization, shamanism, animal spirits, resource development, and empowerment. Throughout all periods, indigenous people themselves have also been involved in research.

"Mongolia, in its present economic and political relation to the Russian and Chinese empires": p. 261-304. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Includes index. ; "Mongolia, in its present economic and political relation to the Russian and Chinese empires": p. 261-304. ; Mode of access: Internet.

This essay reviews new books by Sarah Badcock, Daniel
Beer, and Andrew Gentes on Siberian exile in the long nineteenth
century. Based on a wealth of memoirs and archival documents, all
three studies shed new light on the aims, practices, and lived experience
of exile, with Beer providing a broad overview and Gentes
and Badcock focusing on specific episodes. Meticulously researched
and well written, the books demonstrate the chaotic nature of exile,
with corruption, violence, and the nature of the exiles themselves
contributing to the system's failures to achieve its often-conflicting
goals. More context in terms of Siberian development and the Russian
penal system and greater theoretical and comparative perspective
would have further strengthened these important new books.