Istvan Santha

Within the Russian Federation there are nearly 200 recognized "nationalities," approximately 130 of which could claim to be "indigenous." However, only 45 peoples are officially recognized as "indigenous small-numbered peoples of the Russian Federation" and thereby qualify for the rights, privileges, and state support earmarked for indigenous peoples. This status is conditioned upon a maximum group size of 50,000. While experts insist that this numerical criterion is provisional and without serious political implications, our fieldwork demonstrates that it has become a social fact that cannot be ignored, especially in light of the 2002 All-Russia Census and the release of its results in 2004. This numerical benchmark forces a dichotomization into small-numbered versus non-small-numbered peoples and creates a peculiar type of identity politics based on ethnic-group size. The "indigenous small-numbered" status is also conditioned upon a set of overlapping but often contradictory residency requirements. Using case studies from southern Siberia and the north of European Russia, we document the dynamic interplay between these dimensions of identity and the opportunities for maneuvering in the competition for the benefits that attach to certain categories. However, indigenous peoples who engage in such identity politics run the risk of becoming "incarcerated" within the confines of those categories.

Using ethnographic materials collected in 2008 and 2009 in a distant and isolated village in East Siberia, this article shows how slow and distorted connections contribute to the development of a specific eco-biopolitical space that can be likened to a spaceship physically disconnected from the mainland. Life in such a ‘bubble’ is dependent on supplies from the mainland, which create rhythms of activities in the community. The lack of access to state services and institutions is compensated by local initiatives to mimic such organisations. The state provides channels of escape from the village, such as emergency flights, but does not invest in infrastructures that would link this settlement to other places. The community ‘bubble’ exists not because of infrastructural absence per se, but because this isolation is asymmetrical. It is easier and faster to get from the village to the centre than it is to return. This imbalance expresses the power relations between the centre and periphery and systematically reproduces conditions in which resources drain from the village. This ‘slow connection’ is the condition for the creation of a specific eco-biopolitical regime, in which a rich place is occupied by people living in poverty.

This article presents some results of the photographic analysis project, that we accomplish on the basis of 17,000 photos shot during the anthropological fieldwork between October 2008 and November 2009 among Evenki living in East Buryatia, in the Eastern part of Siberia. The aim of the project is to study the non-verbal patterns of culture. Some activities are significant due to the natural environment and the peripheral position of the Evenki land. Modern and old instruments can be seen together in the taiga, they relate to each other and form pairs. The existence of these pairs show the necessity of the co-presence of modern and old technologies and the importance of the categories – activities – tasks connected with them. An old instrument can remain among the Evenki only if an adaptable new instrument can find its place in the everyday life. Sometimes old practical skills also need to be reinvented for the accomplishment of a particular task. The things which have no modern existing pair, step by step lose their place and extinguish.

This experimental book is about the Evenki hunter-gatherers of Siberia. Through innovative visual methodology it reveals that despite an old stereotype of that lifestyle being a part of humanity’s past, it is probably in humanity’s future. In six chapters filled with a flow of photographs that cover such topics as shamanic rituals, hunting, foraging, reindeer herding, the application of new technologies and jade mining, the authors show that hunter-gathering is not a primitive way of survival, but a complex and open-to-change philosophy of life that is embodied in everyday practices. Photographs allow readers to immerse themselves in the most profound layers of human experiences, and astute ethnographic and analytic summaries help them navigate the world of the taiga, where people are neither conquerors of natural forces nor passive consumers of resources. The book will be of interest both to social anthropologists and general readers curious about life in unfamiliar places.

Evenki are modern hunter-gatherers who live in Central and Eastern Siberia, Russian Federation. They are known to scholarship for their animistic worldview, and because the word ‘shaman’ has been borrowed from their language. Despite such recognition contemporary Evenki everyday life rarely appears as a subject for anthropological monographs, mainly because access to Evenki communities for the purpose of extended fieldwork has only recently become possible. In this original study of the Evenki the authors describe a variety of events and situations they observed during fieldwork, and through these experiences document different strategies that Evenki use to retain their ethos as hunter-gatherers even in circumstances when hunting is prohibited. The authors adopt the vocabulary of cybernetics, proposed by anthropologist Gregory Bateson, in order to underline the circuit logic of events that happen in Evenki land. Culture Contact in Evenki Land, therefore, will be welcomed by social anthropologists in general and specialists of Siberian and Inner Asian studies (Manchu-Tungus peoples) and hunter-gatherer peoples in particular, as well as those interested in the cybernetic approach.