Alexander A Panchenko
Biographic Data
| ID | 816631 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander A Panchenko |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander A |
| FAMILY NAME | Panchenko |
| SIGNATURE | PANCHENKO A A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute of Russian Literature |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7292-0303 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Talking about the Sacred
The introductory paper deals with theoretical issues related to the study of ritual and the sacred in secular and post‐secular cultures. Social research in recent decades shows that the unambiguous opposition between religion and secularism is not quite workable as a socio‐historical concept, and that perceptions of the sacred in modern societies turn out to be dynamic and contradictory in their own way. The articles collected focus on various an…
Imagining a Modern Nineteenth-Century Priest
The article is devoted to the study of the extent to which the fiction can have predictive potential in describing the religious life of the modern era and, in particular, the figure of the Orthodox priest in the Russian Empire. The focus is on the epistolary novel by Alexander Sturdza “Letters on the Offices of Holy Orders” (1840– 1841). The priest depicted by Sturdza must meet the requirements of modernity, be a “priest of the 19th century.” Mo…
Russian Obscene Language and New Religious Ontologies
The paper focuses on the resemantisation and the new mythologies of Russian obscene language in present day Orthodox culture and larger cultural contexts. The social history of Russian obscene language (known as mat or maternaia bran’) still appears to be quite obscure and intriguing. Unlike profanities in many other European languages that employed a lot of symbols and topoi from Christian culture, Russian swearing concentrated predominantly on …
The Cross and the Pudenda
2 0 2 5 , 6 5 : XV
Inspirational Insights
The paper deals with applicability of the ‘memetic approach’ and ‘epidemiology of culture’ in present day folklore research. These theoretical models could be supplemented by certain ideas and hypotheses borrowed from actor-network theory and the cognitive science of religion. The development of contemporary folkloristic theorising could proceed from a new experimental ethnography that would combine memory and narrative studies, cognitive researc…
Multiple Moralities and Religions in Post-Soviet Russia
In the post-Soviet period morality became a debatable concept, open to a multitude of expressions and performances. From Russian Orthodoxy to Islam, from shamanism to Protestantism, religions of various kinds provided some of the first possible alternative moral discourses and practices after the end of the Soviet system. This influence remains strong today. Within the Russian context, religion and morality intersect in such social domains as the…
Religion for Religious Studies
2 0 2 2 , 5 3
Forum
Material religion" as a research program is a relatively new development in the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities. Though this approach has its own forerunners and predecessors, one can argue that it took shape in the wake of an epistemological critique of social and cultural anthropology which treated religion as embedded in the cognitive and psychological experiences of a human being. Accordingly, the material manifestatio…
The “Kirghiz Fairy Tale” in The Gift
In the second chapter of The Gift, Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev recalls a “Kirghiz fairy tale” about a human eye that wants “to encompass everything in the world.” The plot of the story goes back to a Talmudic parable about Alexander the Great. The parable was retold in Russian by a number of writers and scholars in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. However, it seems unlikely that Nabokov did use in any original piece of Inner As…
The Moral Economies of Sacrifice and Sacrilege in Russian Agrarian Culture
This article challenges the empirical usefulness of historical and anthropological approaches (Walter Burkert, René Girard, et al.) when considering sacrifice as a socially acceptable projection of aggression inherent in all human beings. Ideas formulated by Burkert and Girard were later criticised by a number of anthropologists and students of religion. At the same time, however, historical and ethnographic data sometimes reveal particular conne…
Rite and Time
___
Ancient Wisdom, Stigmatised Knowledge, and Sacred Landscapes
The four articles in this section deal with anthropological study of New Age beliefs and practices in post-Soviet Russia. They are in part the result of a joint German–Russian research project titled New Religious Cultures in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Ideology, Social Networks, Discourses, supported by the German Research Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. In this introductory paper I will briefly discuss the prin…
“Old Sects” in a New Light
The introductory paper to the thematic block deals with fundamental issues of present day historical, anthropological, and religious studies of the so called “old Russian sects” of the 18th and 19th centuries. Russian religious dissenters of this period could be hardly viewed as homogeneous or integrated religious culture both historically and socially. However, the study of these movements as well as their representation in various discursive an…
Channeling, Agency, and Strategic Information
One important aspect of religious practices and representations concerns the way information is handled. This article understands religion as a form of imagination, giving human properties to “nonhuman” agents (and vice versa), and thus, the rules of communication and interaction with such agents play a special role in religious culture. Webb Keane’s theory of “semiotic ideologies” is one tool that facilitates the study of religious norms, expect…
Invisible Partners and Strategic Information
“Semiotic Ideologies”, Mediation and Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
Why Was a Baby Devil Born
1923 . , . ( )
The Beast Computer in Brussels
Conspiracy theory is a powerful explanatory model or a way of thinking, which influences many cultural forms and social processes across the contemporary world. Recent academic research into conspiracy theories provides a set of interpretations ranging from medicalization (social/political paranoids) to the concept of 'popular knowledge' as a specifically postmodern phenomenon. In modern and postmodern societies, conspiracy theories often motivat…
Laura Stark. Peasants, Pilgrims, and Sacred Promises
Laura Stark's book deals with an interesting albeit complicated topic: the religious culture and everyday ritual practices of Orthodox Karelian peasants living on the borderlands between Northwestern Russia and Finland. Orthodox Karelians are not the only group speaking a Finnish language and inheriting Finno-Ugrian cultural traditions, while at the same time sharing the popular religious practices of the Russian Orthodox. Other groups in the reg…
The Cult of Lenin and "Soviet Folklore"
In discussing the folktale, we should remember the words of V. I. Lenin: "Every folktale includes some elements of reality" Even a very brief survey of the folktale convinces
New Religious Movements and the Study of Folklore
The present article deals with the question of emergence of new religious movements in contemporary Russia. Although sociological approach to the study of new religious movements proceeds usually from the theories of secularization, the author claims that the appearance of these movements should be viewed also in various contexts of national and historical peculiarities of different cultures. He stresses the importance of new urban mythology and …
A Sacred Place near Kashel'kovo Village
Village sacred places—revered stones, springs, trees, stone and wooden crosses, and so forth—have recently attracted attention from Russian scholars (Aleksandrov 1983; Zolotov 1981; Kurbatov 1995; Makarov and Chernetsov 1988; Panchenko 1996 a and b; Shorin 1991; and others). They, however, usually regard these monuments as "sources for studying paganism," as opposed to analyzing Russian folk culture of the late Middle Ages and modern times. In ad…
Religion for Religious Studies
2 0 2 2 , 5 3
Forum
Material religion" as a research program is a relatively new development in the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities. Though this approach has its own forerunners and predecessors, one can argue that it took shape in the wake of an epistemological critique of social and cultural anthropology which treated religion as embedded in the cognitive and psychological experiences of a human being. Accordingly, the material manifestatio…
A Sacred Place near Kashel'kovo Village
Village sacred places—revered stones, springs, trees, stone and wooden crosses, and so forth—have recently attracted attention from Russian scholars (Aleksandrov 1983; Zolotov 1981; Kurbatov 1995; Makarov and Chernetsov 1988; Panchenko 1996 a and b; Shorin 1991; and others). They, however, usually regard these monuments as "sources for studying paganism," as opposed to analyzing Russian folk culture of the late Middle Ages and modern times. In ad…
New Religious Movements and the Study of Folklore
The present article deals with the question of emergence of new religious movements in contemporary Russia. Although sociological approach to the study of new religious movements proceeds usually from the theories of secularization, the author claims that the appearance of these movements should be viewed also in various contexts of national and historical peculiarities of different cultures. He stresses the importance of new urban mythology and …
Laura Stark. Peasants, Pilgrims, and Sacred Promises
Laura Stark's book deals with an interesting albeit complicated topic: the religious culture and everyday ritual practices of Orthodox Karelian peasants living on the borderlands between Northwestern Russia and Finland. Orthodox Karelians are not the only group speaking a Finnish language and inheriting Finno-Ugrian cultural traditions, while at the same time sharing the popular religious practices of the Russian Orthodox. Other groups in the reg…
The Cult of Lenin and "Soviet Folklore"
In discussing the folktale, we should remember the words of V. I. Lenin: "Every folktale includes some elements of reality" Even a very brief survey of the folktale convinces
The Beast Computer in Brussels
Conspiracy theory is a powerful explanatory model or a way of thinking, which influences many cultural forms and social processes across the contemporary world. Recent academic research into conspiracy theories provides a set of interpretations ranging from medicalization (social/political paranoids) to the concept of 'popular knowledge' as a specifically postmodern phenomenon. In modern and postmodern societies, conspiracy theories often motivat…
Why Was a Baby Devil Born
1923 . , . ( )
Invisible Partners and Strategic Information
“Semiotic Ideologies”, Mediation and Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
“Old Sects” in a New Light
The introductory paper to the thematic block deals with fundamental issues of present day historical, anthropological, and religious studies of the so called “old Russian sects” of the 18th and 19th centuries. Russian religious dissenters of this period could be hardly viewed as homogeneous or integrated religious culture both historically and socially. However, the study of these movements as well as their representation in various discursive an…
Channeling, Agency, and Strategic Information
One important aspect of religious practices and representations concerns the way information is handled. This article understands religion as a form of imagination, giving human properties to “nonhuman” agents (and vice versa), and thus, the rules of communication and interaction with such agents play a special role in religious culture. Webb Keane’s theory of “semiotic ideologies” is one tool that facilitates the study of religious norms, expect…
The “Kirghiz Fairy Tale” in The Gift
In the second chapter of The Gift, Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev recalls a “Kirghiz fairy tale” about a human eye that wants “to encompass everything in the world.” The plot of the story goes back to a Talmudic parable about Alexander the Great. The parable was retold in Russian by a number of writers and scholars in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. However, it seems unlikely that Nabokov did use in any original piece of Inner As…
The Moral Economies of Sacrifice and Sacrilege in Russian Agrarian Culture
This article challenges the empirical usefulness of historical and anthropological approaches (Walter Burkert, René Girard, et al.) when considering sacrifice as a socially acceptable projection of aggression inherent in all human beings. Ideas formulated by Burkert and Girard were later criticised by a number of anthropologists and students of religion. At the same time, however, historical and ethnographic data sometimes reveal particular conne…
Rite and Time
___
Ancient Wisdom, Stigmatised Knowledge, and Sacred Landscapes
The four articles in this section deal with anthropological study of New Age beliefs and practices in post-Soviet Russia. They are in part the result of a joint German–Russian research project titled New Religious Cultures in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Ideology, Social Networks, Discourses, supported by the German Research Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. In this introductory paper I will briefly discuss the prin…
Multiple Moralities and Religions in Post-Soviet Russia
In the post-Soviet period morality became a debatable concept, open to a multitude of expressions and performances. From Russian Orthodoxy to Islam, from shamanism to Protestantism, religions of various kinds provided some of the first possible alternative moral discourses and practices after the end of the Soviet system. This influence remains strong today. Within the Russian context, religion and morality intersect in such social domains as the…
Religion for Religious Studies
2 0 2 2 , 5 3
Forum
Material religion" as a research program is a relatively new development in the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities. Though this approach has its own forerunners and predecessors, one can argue that it took shape in the wake of an epistemological critique of social and cultural anthropology which treated religion as embedded in the cognitive and psychological experiences of a human being. Accordingly, the material manifestatio…
Inspirational Insights
The paper deals with applicability of the ‘memetic approach’ and ‘epidemiology of culture’ in present day folklore research. These theoretical models could be supplemented by certain ideas and hypotheses borrowed from actor-network theory and the cognitive science of religion. The development of contemporary folkloristic theorising could proceed from a new experimental ethnography that would combine memory and narrative studies, cognitive researc…
Talking about the Sacred
The introductory paper deals with theoretical issues related to the study of ritual and the sacred in secular and post‐secular cultures. Social research in recent decades shows that the unambiguous opposition between religion and secularism is not quite workable as a socio‐historical concept, and that perceptions of the sacred in modern societies turn out to be dynamic and contradictory in their own way. The articles collected focus on various an…
Imagining a Modern Nineteenth-Century Priest
The article is devoted to the study of the extent to which the fiction can have predictive potential in describing the religious life of the modern era and, in particular, the figure of the Orthodox priest in the Russian Empire. The focus is on the epistolary novel by Alexander Sturdza “Letters on the Offices of Holy Orders” (1840– 1841). The priest depicted by Sturdza must meet the requirements of modernity, be a “priest of the 19th century.” Mo…
Russian Obscene Language and New Religious Ontologies
The paper focuses on the resemantisation and the new mythologies of Russian obscene language in present day Orthodox culture and larger cultural contexts. The social history of Russian obscene language (known as mat or maternaia bran’) still appears to be quite obscure and intriguing. Unlike profanities in many other European languages that employed a lot of symbols and topoi from Christian culture, Russian swearing concentrated predominantly on …
The Cross and the Pudenda
2 0 2 5 , 6 5 : XV
Art (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · History (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (7 works)