Ethnographers helped to perceive, to understand and also to shape imperial as well as Soviet Russia's cultural diversity. This volume focuses on the contexts in which ethnographic knowledge was created. Usually, ethnographic findings were superseded by imperial discourse: Defining regions, connecting them with ethnic origins and conceiving national entities necessarily implied the mapping of political and historical hierarchies. But beyond these spatial conceptualizations the essays particularly address the specific conditions in which ethnographic knowledge appeared and changed. On the one hand, they turn to the several fields into which ethnographic knowledge poured and materialized, i.e., history, historiography, anthropology or ideology. On the other, they equally consider the impact of the specific formats, i.e., pictures, maps, atlases, lectures, songs, museums, and exhibitions, on academic as well as non-academic manifestations.
- Cover
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Table of Contents
- Introduction: On the Making of Ethnographic Knowledge in Russia
- Imperial Case Studies: Russian and British Ethnographic Theory
- Part I: Paradigms
- Russian Ethnography as a Science: Truths Claimed, Trails Followed
- Beyond, against, and with Ethnography: Physical Anthropology as a Science of Russian Modernity
- Ethnography, Marxism, and Soviet Ideology
- Ethnogenesis and Historiography: Historical Narratives for Central Asia in the 1940s and 1950s
- Part II: Representations
- Symbols, Conventions, and Practices: Visual Representation of Ethnographic Knowledge on Siberia in Early Modern Maps and Reports
- Empire Complex: Arrangements in the Russian Ethnographic Museum, 1910
- Learning about the Nation: Ethnographic Representations of Children, Representations of Ethnography for Children
- Part III: Peoples
- Siberian Ruptures: Dilemmas of Ethnography in an Imperial Situation
- Concepts of Ukrainian Folklore and the Transition from Imperial Russia to Stalin’s Soviet Empire
- No Love Affair: Ingush and Chechen Imperial Ethnographies
- National Inventions: The Imperial Emancipation of the Karaitesfrom Jewishness
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Back cover