10th Anniversary International Research Youth Conference ‘Issues in History, International Relations, and Document Science’

On April 14-17, 2014, the 10th International Research Youth Conference ‘Issues in History, International Relations, and Document Science’ was carried out at the TSU Department of History. For the first time during the conference there was a session titled ‘Issues in Social Anthropology’ organized. The session was chaired by the head of LSAR, professor Irina Nam and LSAR leading researcher Irina Popravko. LSAR leading research fellow Evgeniy Vasilyev, who supervises the Laboratory’s research project ‘The archaeological heritage in the formation and transformation of regional and ethnic identities in Siberia’, acted as an invited expert of the session. Presentations delivered at the conference covered a wide range of issues related to the main research activities carried out at the Laboratory.

The conference was started off by laboratory assistants Sergey Artsemovich and Anton Sadyrin (research adviser – professor Dmitry Funk) speaking on the use of land by the Shors in the context of a social and economic conflict through the example of Kazas village. The discussion that followed touched upon some theoretical problems that made the participants ponder on the role of ‘ethnic factor’ in contemporary social, political, and economic conflicts.

Anastasia Burkun and Anna Voroshilova supervised by LSAR research fellow Elena Kim under the LSAR project ‘The Orthodox Landscape of Taiga Siberia’ told about the specifics of social interaction in the Tomsk-Chulym taiga area, based on the analysis of statistics for the year 1911 and the clerical statement on the state of churches in the Tomsk district.

An emotionally charged talk by Seil Janyzakova (research adviser – professor Irina Nam), dedicated to the difficulties in adaptation facing student migrants from Kyrgyzstan in Tomsk, caused an equally emotional discussion and was said to be quite promising in terms of practical importance for the current university policy aimed at attracting international students.

Personally engaged in the Cossack community of Tomsk, Polina Koshkaryova gave her presentation titled ‘On the issue of identity of today’s Tomsk Cossacks’ (research adviser – LSAR research fellow Irina Popravko) raising the question about the boundaries of the Cossack community and set out future prospects for the study of this community, which is being reconstructed (not without the involvement of the state itself) in contemporary Russia and the city.

The presentation by Nikita Palysh (research adviser – LSAR research fellow Evgeniy Vasilyev) proved to be methodologically verified and revealing a link with every other presentation given during the session. Titled ‘Lewis H. Morgan and the New Confederacy of the Iroquois: a few storylines from the history of the development of social anthropology in the US’, and based on the analysis of the history of anthropological knowledge overseas, his presentation brought forward some serious questions about the influence of social and political conditions on choosing an object of anthropological research and also about the need for continued research reflection.

The session’s final presentation was that by Fyodor Smetanin speaking on the organization of cultural autonomy of Muslims of Tomsk after the February Revolution (research adviser –professor Irina Nam). A piece of history that took place nearly a hundred years ago turned out to be topical against the backdrop of the current events in Crimea and the updated issue of the Crimean Tatars.

Each of the presentations was assessed against a number of preset criteria and based on the results the three best presentations were named: the first best presentation was by Fyodor Smetanin, the second best – by Sergey Artsemovich and Anton Sadyrin, and the third best – actually two presentations were chosen here – by Seil Janyzakova and that by Polina Koshkaryova.