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Book review of the publication Alexander D. King, Living with Koryak Traditions: Playing with Culture in Siberia. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2011, 348 pp.

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In this article I try to analyse some aspects of heritage management in the Turya village of the Republic of Komi, Russia. I attempt to demonstrate how the local museum curator, Olga Shlopova, treats her fairy tales, museum exposition and collection of local heritage. My aim is to interpret some dialogue situations between local village people, scholars and officials which indicate how people manage differences in understanding of heritage administration. I presume that local people’s ideas and methods of dealing with cultural phenomena and institutions may obtain their own specific value in the course of culture processes. The question is, how flexible can official cultural specialists be in adapting and reflecting these, sometimes, slightly unconventional approaches. I suppose that an ethical approach helps a researcher to distance him or herself from possible prejudices or, at least, to be more conscious about stereotypes or pre-settled patterns of thinking. Unconditional recognition of an indigenous way of understanding local phenomena also helps a researcher to reach a more culture-specific model of interpretation.

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The history of Finno-Ugric Ethnology has already come a considerable way. There have been periods of brilliant discovery as well as periods of stagnation; or, what was worse, periods when what was said depended on what the prevailing conditions demanded. Looking back, we are to some degree able to reconstruct the facts and to follow the development of the ideas that contributed to contemporary studies. The main subject of this paper is the interpretation of mutual understanding between the ethnologist and government in the history of Finno-Ugric studies in Russia between the 18th and 20th centuries.

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The genre system of Udmurt folk songs has been researched by scholars many times. The accumulation and publication of new folklore and ethnographic material requires reconsideration of the general concept and definition. The folklore of northern Udmurtia gives interesting material for the study of the origins of some genres and of their interconnections. For example, the researching of the Udmurt mad’ song genre, which is associated with popular Udmurt and Russian songs today, within the overall context of the Udmurt genre system, and use of comparison materials from the Komi and Ob Ugrians, has lead to ideas about the magical character of this genre and its syncretism (the song fairytale, the song riddle, the song dialogue).

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3. Vol 10 No 2 (2016): Drinking Is Not Just Fun /
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2016-0006 This special issue of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics is composed on the basis of papers presented at the University of Tartu’s 5th International Arctic Workshop, titled Responsibility and Authority in Drinking (May 30–31, 2014). 

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2016-0011 When I conducted fieldwork among the Darhad of northern Mongolia my informants repeatedly asserted that after a good singer’s performance even the most badly intoxicated lad stands still and keeps silent. In this article, I make three points in order to explain why this claim was made. In the first one, I show that the main concern about singing performance at social gatherings is not about revealing the singer’s inner emotional realm but rather about crafting a collective feeling that has the ability to make people temporarily shed their otherness and converge. The problem with drunkards lies in the fact that they are unable to participate and even noisily impede this rite of convergence. The main reason is that they are not sufficiently detached from their own inner realm. I then put the concept of noise in context, arguing that it forms the repulsive pole of a Mongolian sonic continuum. In my last point, I stress the fact that according to Mongolian linguistic ideology, noise brings misfortune to the entire community. That is why good singers must win their battle against drunkards.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2016-0014 Report of the 10th Siberian Studies Conference titled Passion for Life: Emotions, Feelings, and Perception in the North and Siberia held in Saint Petersburg, October 24–26, 2016.

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The current volume presents research from two annual conferences at the Estonian National Museum, dealing with issues relating to the development of museums and issues of the relationship between culture and power.

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This article analyses the films made by the Estonian National Museum in the 1970s and the 1980s both from the point of view of the filming activity and of the content of these films. Although the Museum’s director, Aleksei Peterson, who developed this activity, was mainly interested in strictly ethnographic film, the legacy from this period consists mainly, but not only, of film monographs made both in Estonia and in the Finno-Ugric regions. These films encompass the ethnographers’ knowledge of the reconstructed period, the beginning of the 20th century. Nonetheless, the films made in Udmurtia contain several shots that reflect skills and practices still active at the end of that century. Other films are totally shot spontaneously, and there is also an example of comparative material. These forgotten films deserve to be remembered.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2016-0007 This article explores the topic of alcohol consumption in Russia. My fieldwork was conducted in the north of European Russia between 2010 and 2014 in Arkhangelskaya and Vologodskaya oblasts. The main idea of the paper is to look at alcohol drinking through the lens of rites of passage and especially liminality. I argue that the traditional festivities, and alcohol consumption with the traditional type of liminality, were based on a small amount of sugar and money and also the long period of time required to make beer. In 1960s, after ukrupneniye and the urbanisation of villages, money and spirits came to the villages. Together with an existing prohibition on ceremonies and rites they created a new permanent liminality of drinking. This new liminality included getting dead drunk and was paradoxically approved by Soviet ideology.

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