Sibirica

This special issue of Sibirica is guest-edited by Joachim Otto Habeck, and the Editors applaud his work to bring together this excellent group of papers resulting from a conference he organized at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Dr Habeck is Coordinator of the Siberian Studies Centre at the MPI, which is now well established as a key institution in the anthropology of Siberia. The conference included scholars from several disciplines, and thus publication in Sibirica seemed to be the perfect choice, reflecting the journal’s commitment to cross-disciplinary conversations on the region.

This special issue of Sibirica comprises a selection of papers presented at the conference “'Everything is still before you“: being young in Siberia today' (Halle, November 2003). This introduction opens with a short review of the conventional social-sciences approach toward youth (especially indigenous youth) as an 'object of concern'. A brief summary of the subsequent papers follows, highlighting several crosscutting themes: (1) the concept of youth, the process of becoming an adult and the expectations connected with it; (2) acquisition of knowledge within and outside formal education; and (3) sports, music and games as meaningful and creative spheres of social interaction. The introduction concludes with the argument that the ambit of 'Siberian' anthropology can be significantly enlarged through the integration of sociological and cultural studies approaches and methods into ethnographic inquiry.

Russians often use slogans to triangulate themselves between state and society, and slogans about youth are no exception. This article conducts a cultural historical analysis of how the concept of 'youth' has been applied both to young people and to the idea of a nation in Siberia. The author argues that categories of youth in Russia, and in Siberia, are very different from their Euro-American cousins. Citing survey data, and material from historical and contemporary movements for self-determination, he argues that youth discourse is future-oriented, collectivist, and is often used in an ironic register in order to carry moral messages.

The study looks at young people's situations in small communities in Siberia against a backdrop of socioeconomic and rural-urban divides in post-Soviet Russia. Focusing on the end of compulsory schooling, the study looks at the fit between young people's accounts of their circumstances, aspirations for the future and feelings about themselves, as well as implications for mental well-being. A mixed-methods approach is adopted, including preliminary fieldwork, a large-scale survey (n approximately 700) and in-depth interviews (n approximately 90). Situations and well-being in rural areas and small towns in Novosibirskaia oblast' are compared with life in the city of Novosibirsk. There is stark segmentation by locality. In small communities, the household 'copes' along with the young person in shared goals and understandings and in aspiring to get 'an education' as a means to secure employment and a 'comfortable' life beyond subsistence. Most households locally share the same situations. Almost all imagine continuing their education and leaving their home communities, dependent on family resources and networks. Horizons are limited to towns in the region, or perhaps the city, seen as a place of possibilities but also risks. Beyond the rural household, the collectivity of peers represents another key resource in negotiating and maintaining self-worth. Neither individualism nor the reach of 'global' culture is evident. Young people are embedded in the 'local', but despite their situations and poor prospects, these do not affect their sense of themselves. If anything, profiles of mental well-being and, certainly, self-worth are better in rural communities compared to the city.

This article examines the attitudes of the indigenous people in Markovo, Chukotka, to their tradition and traditional knowledge as it relates to their becoming adult members in the community. Within the local cosmological system the opposition between the elders, who are considered as possessors of special knowledge, and the youngsters, who are seen as lacking it, creates certain tensions and determines the dynamics of individual development. A person who has entered her or his adulthood should accumulate special knowledge and power. In doing so, young adults begin to overcome the oppositional relationship between elders and youngsters. Markovo villagers associate such special knowledge and power with tradition. However, modern ways of life have become the dominant frame of reference, thus the position of youngsters toward tradition is not self-evident. They feel the need to negotiate their place in the community and their indigenous identity. Discussions about tradition play an important role in their attempts at attaining a local identity.

This article discusses the introduction of 'ethnic subjects' to the Yukaghir national school in Nelemnoe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. School activities aim at 'reviving' traditional culture, language, customs, etc. However, even though children have been taught their native language for more than 10 years, none of them is able to use it in everyday life. What is the influence of 'traditional handcraft' or 'regional knowledge' on Nelemnoe youngsters and their identity? Will ethno-pedagogy help them to preserve and develop their culture? How are local teachers adapting traditional culture to what they perceive as young people's needs? By answering these and other questions, the author tries to uncover the role of school in small communities in Siberia. Beyond the family, the social life of teenagers is mainly connected with the school, thus we may assume that the school is one of the most important factors shaping the futures of young people.

Residential schooling has been widely blamed for destroying aboriginal cultures. This article, based on extensive fieldwork with Nenets schoolchildren in the Yamal Autonomous Okrug, argues that for Yamal Nenetses the residential school can become a part of their traditional culture. The article compares the experiences of Nenets pupils in the 1950s to those of Nenets pupils today. It argues that present-day residential school experience is different, owing to the large number of Nenetses living in settlements, the fact that Nenetses use their language in the settlement context, and the fact that elder kinsmen actively prepare tundra children for the experience of schooling.

The Sakha have had their own popular music since the 1970s. During the Soviet era, music culture was controlled by the state. Starting in the 1990s, new pop-music institutions and venues emerged and new entrepreneurs entered the music business as club owners, managers, producers, DJs, etc. In this article, I examine multiple social relations in the music business. Music has become a possibility for village youth to leave their villages and gain fame as artists. The Sakha music world contains various networks where criminal structures, artists, businessmen and media are interlinked. Through this linkage, music is used to gain a community's support for semi-legal business activities. At the same time, both the artists and producers present themselves to the public as the custodians of Sakha 'national' culture. The article discusses ways in which the artists' popularity is connected to their position in the music business, and how ethnic symbols are used to gain success.

After a brief description of how Soviet policy influenced and changed the centuries-old traditional Buriat sports holiday called Surkharban, this paper discusses the changes that this festivity has been undergoing since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Under Soviet rule, this annual holiday, earlier linked to religious rituals, became secularised. Party and State propaganda infiltrated the event in a variety of ways and international rules were adopted for the games. The last 15 years have seen a reversal of this process, leading to a stormy re-traditionalisation of the holiday in general and of the games in particular. However, this did not occur in a uniform manner and is still far from being completed. On the contrary, the author has been observing a wide spectrum of local variants and new changes every year. He analyses the ways in which Buriat sports games are performed and how these public events mirror the manifold socioeconomic and political developments in post-Soviet Buriatiia.

The article describes one of the most developed networks of intellectual youth in post-Soviet Russia. This network originated in science-fiction clubs and the 'Zarnitsa game' of the 1960s to 1980s. Yet unlike Zarnitsa games, which have been used at Soviet schools as an instrument of political mainstreaming, the current role-playing games community is opposing itself to mainstream politics and popular culture. The article approaches this network as a community of practice, which is constituted by three basic elements: learning, doing, and justification of meaning. Both leaders and rank-and-file members of the community justify their agency within the community through the concept of rule. It is the rule-governed community, which according to them, helps them to feel secure and fearless in a society that they see as devoid of any strict regulations. The article closes with an analysis of the inner and outer conflicts of the role-playing games community.