N Ssorin-Chaikov
Biographic Data
| ID | 38122 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Ssorin-Chaikov |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Ssorin-Chaikov |
| SIGNATURE | SSORIN-CHAIKOV N |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Research University Higher School of Economics |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7521-6912 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 110 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Time
Time, from an anthropological perspective, is culturally specific and inseparable from our understanding of the world and our place in it. Anthropology charts how and to what extent time is culturally constituted, and how, increasingly, these cultural constructs coexist, come into conflict, and colonise each other. This entry introduces time as a field of anthropological inquiry, including its emergence in philosophy and evolutionary thought, and…
Economics, Oikonomia, Domostroi
This article is an introduction to the issue's special theme on "Economic Anthropology of Household Outside Metropolitan Areas in Contemporary Russia", featuring contributions by Lidia Rakhmanova, Aleksandra Kasatkina, Daria Tereshina, and Polina Yarovaya. This article contributes to rethinking economic anthropology in terms of culturally specific categories under study. It does so by revisiting the role of household in the genealogy of "economy,…
Forum on the new far right
Introduction
Rethinking performativity
Ethnographic conceptualism takes its cue from conceptual art and uses artistic interventions as an anthropological research tool. The term ‘ethnographic conceptualism’ was coined to sum up the method of the exhibition project Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Kremlin Museum, Moscow 2006) as simultaneously a reflection on the vast and complex economy of public gifts to heads of Soviet state, a distinctly post-Soviet political and cultural artefact, and as …
Reassembling history and anthropology in Russian anthropology
This two‐part overview of contemporary Russian anthropology focuses in detail on the work of several scholars and situates it in the changing landscape of Russian academia. The main issue I address is debates about an academic identity of Russian anthropology as ‘historical science’. Given that in Western anthropology, history has become one of the leading modes of anthropological analysis and that the turn to history marked a radical repositioni…
Reassembling history and anthropology in Russian anthropology
This two‐part overview of contemporary Russian anthropology focuses in detail on the work of several scholars and situates it in the changing landscape of Russian academia. The main issue I address is the debated academic identity of anthropology as ‘historical science’ as it is officially classed in Russia. Proceeding in a case‐study manner, I aim to re‐conceptualise the relationship between anthropology and history from the point of view of the…
Conceptualism, Ethnographic
Ethnographic conceptualism (EC) is conceptual art conducted as ethnography and, conversely, ethnography conducted as conceptual art. EC originated in anthropological exhibition practices in Russia and echoes Moscow conceptualism's critical engagement with the ideology and aesthetics of state socialism. In contrast to ethnography as participant observation of what exists, EC explicitly constructs reality that it studies. EC's artistic aim is to re…
Hybrid Peace
This article reviews recent ethnographies of war that shed light on interconnected states of security at home, international military interventions, and hybrid or rhizomic warfare doctrines. I suggest the notion of hybrid peace to explore global implications of these ethnographic perspectives and to ask what it means to inhabit spaces that are constituted by such hybrid warfare. I argue for the usefulness of Schmitt's "nomos of the earth" and his…
Janet M. Hartley. Siberia
This book’s claim to difference is its focus on “how people lived” (xiv) and it clearly achieves this goal in a concise but holistic English-language account of Siberian history. It is not quite social history but rather a depiction of the pragmatic aspects of life. Janet M. Hartley covers housing, diets, and coping with long-distance travel in conjunction with key historical events from Yermak Timofoyevich’s expedition in the 1580s and Mikhail S…
Soviet Debris
This article approaches failure through the lens of the ruination, residue, and debris that accumulated during the Soviet construction in northern Siberia. My focus is on the ambivalence of ruination and incomplete construction. I argue that debris as material and documentary product of the Soviet project is not merely an important component of the Soviet developmental machine but also a device for naming otherness—in particular, the imperial deb…
Sociopolitics
Sociopolitics refer to ways in which politics and relations of power are constituted through an authoritative discourse on the social. This concept echoes Foucault's biopolitics. "Society" and the "social" are devices, as well as categorical foundations, for the political. As with "bio" in biopolitics, "socio" gives a particular form to power that it articulates and constitutes. This review essay uses this concept to discuss recent work of James …
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), The University of Manchester
Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion 'Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography'. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester - playfully and rigorously eng…
Economic Anthropology
Bear Skins and Macaroni
This article explores a multiplicity of meanings of exchange and multiplicity of relations that are established through exchange. The article is based on long-term fieldwork in the north of the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, in which it was observed how a single item that was changing hands between the same people acquired different meanings. This exchange was understood as trade as well as gift at its different moments. The article approaches th…
Writing power
This is a case study in the anthropology of anthropology. Its ethnographic focus is on a contemporary critical anthropologist, rather than on the figure of a colonial or nationalist scholar who is explored from a critical perspective of contemporary scholarship. I chart an episode in political biography and scholarship of Maxim Kuchinski, a Russian anarchist and ethnographer, and contextualise his views in a shifting landscape of critical theory.…
The Black Box
This article critically revisits the Foucauldian perspective on modernity by exploring the constitutive importance of limits of transparency in relations of power and knowledge. It differentiates between Foucault's Panopticon as a model for modernity, which posits a total visibility of subject under modern gaze, and what I call cybernetic ways of knowing that posit the 'black box' of the inner self that is blocked from visibility. The case in poi…
On heterochrony
Gift relations have been traditionally theorized as antinomial to modernity or, within modernity, in the spheres of the personal relations and ideologies of altruism which dwell on the contrast with commodity and often cast themselves as residual, 'traditional' domains. This article explores claims to modernity that were made by public gift-giving to a modern head of state. It examines birthday gifts to the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that he rec…
The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia
Current cultural theory makes much of the role of the imagination of the "primitive" and the "indigenous" in the making of modern empires. In this study of Russian and Soviet governance of the Evenki hunters and reindeer herders of Northern Siberia, the author explores the reverse side of this social imaginary, exploring what he calls "cultures of statehood" among the very people whom the state consistently rendered stateless. He examines the pol…
Evenki Shamanistic Practices in Soviet Present and Ethnographic Present Perfect
In this article, I explore cultural effects of Soviet religious policies in aboriginal Siberia by looking at the transformation of ritual identities and practices in a group of Evenki hunters and herders between the 1920s and the 1990s. I focus on meanings of buhadyl ("spirits") which Evenki associate with old things and dead people. I read meanings and ritual frameworks of dealing with the buhadyl as sites for re-imagining Evenki identities and …
On heterochrony
Gift relations have been traditionally theorized as antinomial to modernity or, within modernity, in the spheres of the personal relations and ideologies of altruism which dwell on the contrast with commodity and often cast themselves as residual, 'traditional' domains. This article explores claims to modernity that were made by public gift-giving to a modern head of state. It examines birthday gifts to the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that he rec…
Soviet Debris
This article approaches failure through the lens of the ruination, residue, and debris that accumulated during the Soviet construction in northern Siberia. My focus is on the ambivalence of ruination and incomplete construction. I argue that debris as material and documentary product of the Soviet project is not merely an important component of the Soviet developmental machine but also a device for naming otherness—in particular, the imperial deb…
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), The University of Manchester
Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion 'Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography'. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester - playfully and rigorously eng…
Writing power
This is a case study in the anthropology of anthropology. Its ethnographic focus is on a contemporary critical anthropologist, rather than on the figure of a colonial or nationalist scholar who is explored from a critical perspective of contemporary scholarship. I chart an episode in political biography and scholarship of Maxim Kuchinski, a Russian anarchist and ethnographer, and contextualise his views in a shifting landscape of critical theory.…
Evenki Shamanistic Practices in Soviet Present and Ethnographic Present Perfect
In this article, I explore cultural effects of Soviet religious policies in aboriginal Siberia by looking at the transformation of ritual identities and practices in a group of Evenki hunters and herders between the 1920s and the 1990s. I focus on meanings of buhadyl ("spirits") which Evenki associate with old things and dead people. I read meanings and ritual frameworks of dealing with the buhadyl as sites for re-imagining Evenki identities and …
Hybrid Peace
This article reviews recent ethnographies of war that shed light on interconnected states of security at home, international military interventions, and hybrid or rhizomic warfare doctrines. I suggest the notion of hybrid peace to explore global implications of these ethnographic perspectives and to ask what it means to inhabit spaces that are constituted by such hybrid warfare. I argue for the usefulness of Schmitt's "nomos of the earth" and his…
Bear Skins and Macaroni
This article explores a multiplicity of meanings of exchange and multiplicity of relations that are established through exchange. The article is based on long-term fieldwork in the north of the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, in which it was observed how a single item that was changing hands between the same people acquired different meanings. This exchange was understood as trade as well as gift at its different moments. The article approaches th…
Rethinking performativity
Ethnographic conceptualism takes its cue from conceptual art and uses artistic interventions as an anthropological research tool. The term ‘ethnographic conceptualism’ was coined to sum up the method of the exhibition project Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Kremlin Museum, Moscow 2006) as simultaneously a reflection on the vast and complex economy of public gifts to heads of Soviet state, a distinctly post-Soviet political and cultural artefact, and as …
Sociopolitics
Sociopolitics refer to ways in which politics and relations of power are constituted through an authoritative discourse on the social. This concept echoes Foucault's biopolitics. "Society" and the "social" are devices, as well as categorical foundations, for the political. As with "bio" in biopolitics, "socio" gives a particular form to power that it articulates and constitutes. This review essay uses this concept to discuss recent work of James …
The Black Box
This article critically revisits the Foucauldian perspective on modernity by exploring the constitutive importance of limits of transparency in relations of power and knowledge. It differentiates between Foucault's Panopticon as a model for modernity, which posits a total visibility of subject under modern gaze, and what I call cybernetic ways of knowing that posit the 'black box' of the inner self that is blocked from visibility. The case in poi…
Evenki Shamanistic Practices in Soviet Present and Ethnographic Present Perfect
In this article, I explore cultural effects of Soviet religious policies in aboriginal Siberia by looking at the transformation of ritual identities and practices in a group of Evenki hunters and herders between the 1920s and the 1990s. I focus on meanings of buhadyl ("spirits") which Evenki associate with old things and dead people. I read meanings and ritual frameworks of dealing with the buhadyl as sites for re-imagining Evenki identities and …
The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia
Current cultural theory makes much of the role of the imagination of the "primitive" and the "indigenous" in the making of modern empires. In this study of Russian and Soviet governance of the Evenki hunters and reindeer herders of Northern Siberia, the author explores the reverse side of this social imaginary, exploring what he calls "cultures of statehood" among the very people whom the state consistently rendered stateless. He examines the pol…
On heterochrony
Gift relations have been traditionally theorized as antinomial to modernity or, within modernity, in the spheres of the personal relations and ideologies of altruism which dwell on the contrast with commodity and often cast themselves as residual, 'traditional' domains. This article explores claims to modernity that were made by public gift-giving to a modern head of state. It examines birthday gifts to the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that he rec…
The Black Box
This article critically revisits the Foucauldian perspective on modernity by exploring the constitutive importance of limits of transparency in relations of power and knowledge. It differentiates between Foucault's Panopticon as a model for modernity, which posits a total visibility of subject under modern gaze, and what I call cybernetic ways of knowing that posit the 'black box' of the inner self that is blocked from visibility. The case in poi…
Economic Anthropology
Bear Skins and Macaroni
This article explores a multiplicity of meanings of exchange and multiplicity of relations that are established through exchange. The article is based on long-term fieldwork in the north of the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, in which it was observed how a single item that was changing hands between the same people acquired different meanings. This exchange was understood as trade as well as gift at its different moments. The article approaches th…
Writing power
This is a case study in the anthropology of anthropology. Its ethnographic focus is on a contemporary critical anthropologist, rather than on the figure of a colonial or nationalist scholar who is explored from a critical perspective of contemporary scholarship. I chart an episode in political biography and scholarship of Maxim Kuchinski, a Russian anarchist and ethnographer, and contextualise his views in a shifting landscape of critical theory.…
The Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), The University of Manchester
Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion 'Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography'. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester - playfully and rigorously eng…
Sociopolitics
Sociopolitics refer to ways in which politics and relations of power are constituted through an authoritative discourse on the social. This concept echoes Foucault's biopolitics. "Society" and the "social" are devices, as well as categorical foundations, for the political. As with "bio" in biopolitics, "socio" gives a particular form to power that it articulates and constitutes. This review essay uses this concept to discuss recent work of James …
Janet M. Hartley. Siberia
This book’s claim to difference is its focus on “how people lived” (xiv) and it clearly achieves this goal in a concise but holistic English-language account of Siberian history. It is not quite social history but rather a depiction of the pragmatic aspects of life. Janet M. Hartley covers housing, diets, and coping with long-distance travel in conjunction with key historical events from Yermak Timofoyevich’s expedition in the 1580s and Mikhail S…
Soviet Debris
This article approaches failure through the lens of the ruination, residue, and debris that accumulated during the Soviet construction in northern Siberia. My focus is on the ambivalence of ruination and incomplete construction. I argue that debris as material and documentary product of the Soviet project is not merely an important component of the Soviet developmental machine but also a device for naming otherness—in particular, the imperial deb…
Conceptualism, Ethnographic
Ethnographic conceptualism (EC) is conceptual art conducted as ethnography and, conversely, ethnography conducted as conceptual art. EC originated in anthropological exhibition practices in Russia and echoes Moscow conceptualism's critical engagement with the ideology and aesthetics of state socialism. In contrast to ethnography as participant observation of what exists, EC explicitly constructs reality that it studies. EC's artistic aim is to re…
Hybrid Peace
This article reviews recent ethnographies of war that shed light on interconnected states of security at home, international military interventions, and hybrid or rhizomic warfare doctrines. I suggest the notion of hybrid peace to explore global implications of these ethnographic perspectives and to ask what it means to inhabit spaces that are constituted by such hybrid warfare. I argue for the usefulness of Schmitt's "nomos of the earth" and his…
Reassembling history and anthropology in Russian anthropology
This two‐part overview of contemporary Russian anthropology focuses in detail on the work of several scholars and situates it in the changing landscape of Russian academia. The main issue I address is debates about an academic identity of Russian anthropology as ‘historical science’. Given that in Western anthropology, history has become one of the leading modes of anthropological analysis and that the turn to history marked a radical repositioni…
Reassembling history and anthropology in Russian anthropology
This two‐part overview of contemporary Russian anthropology focuses in detail on the work of several scholars and situates it in the changing landscape of Russian academia. The main issue I address is the debated academic identity of anthropology as ‘historical science’ as it is officially classed in Russia. Proceeding in a case‐study manner, I aim to re‐conceptualise the relationship between anthropology and history from the point of view of the…
Introduction
Rethinking performativity
Ethnographic conceptualism takes its cue from conceptual art and uses artistic interventions as an anthropological research tool. The term ‘ethnographic conceptualism’ was coined to sum up the method of the exhibition project Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Kremlin Museum, Moscow 2006) as simultaneously a reflection on the vast and complex economy of public gifts to heads of Soviet state, a distinctly post-Soviet political and cultural artefact, and as …
Forum on the new far right
Economics, Oikonomia, Domostroi
This article is an introduction to the issue's special theme on "Economic Anthropology of Household Outside Metropolitan Areas in Contemporary Russia", featuring contributions by Lidia Rakhmanova, Aleksandra Kasatkina, Daria Tereshina, and Polina Yarovaya. This article contributes to rethinking economic anthropology in terms of culturally specific categories under study. It does so by revisiting the role of household in the genealogy of "economy,…
Time
Time, from an anthropological perspective, is culturally specific and inseparable from our understanding of the world and our place in it. Anthropology charts how and to what extent time is culturally constituted, and how, increasingly, these cultural constructs coexist, come into conflict, and colonise each other. This entry introduces time as a field of anthropological inquiry, including its emergence in philosophy and evolutionary thought, and…
Sociology (16 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · History (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Ethnography (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works)