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Critical review on the E. A. Davydova reindeer Herders of Chukotka: power, kinship, relations with the state (based on materials from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries). Saint Petersburg: MAE RAN, 2022. 316 p. // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2023. Issue 2 (40). P. 164-168

The monograph by E. A. Davydova examines power relations in the communities of Chukchi reindeer herders from the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. The author analyzes the power relations of the reindeer Chukchi in everyday life, family relations, ritual knowledge, and relations with the state. This is the first anthropological study that deals specifically with power relations among the Chukchi. The book's primary source is the unique diaries of the Soviet ethnographer Varvara Kuznetsova, who worked in the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the 1940s and 50s. The framework of the topic arose from the content of the diary entries, as their author held the lowest social position in the Chukchi community, and therefore power relations were involuntarily reflected in her diary entries. The success of the reviewed book was determined by a combination of several factors: a little-researched subject, unique field material by V. Kuznetsova, and a high level of analysis and interpretation by the book's author. E. A. Davydova based her study on the theoretical works of M. Foucault, E. Giddens, K. Wolfe, and other foreign and Russian scientists and on historical, ethnographic, and anthropological literature from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Due to the peculiarities of the key source, the author used micro-historical and biographical methods. The “signs” and well-known features of the Chukchi culture, such as “spousal companionship” (men concluded a friendship agreement among themselves, according to which each of them had the right to his friend's wife), hospitable hetarism, the custom of voluntary death, the custom of gender transformation, the use of hallucinogens and a number of others, the author managed to interpret them in the context of power relations and give them a new understanding. The book contains a lot of new, unique information about Chukchi ethnography in the field of household (use of space, food related to its consumption; leisure, domestic violence); social relations when kinship is considered as a resource and symbolic capital. A special chapter is devoted to Chukchi's relations with the state.

Keywords: field diaries of Varvara Kuznetsova, MAE RAS archive, Chukchi ethnography, power, kinship, relations with the state

People on the Move: The Use of Space by Northern Baikal Evenkis in the Context of Socio-Economic Changes / V. N. Davydov St. Petersburg: MAE RAS, 2022. 316 p. // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2024. Issue 2 (44). P. 138-142

This monograph is dedicated to the mobility practices of the hunters, reindeer herders, and fishermen of the Northern Baikal Evenkis and their engagement with life in the world through the structures they build and use in the context of numerous development projects and innovations. The monograph is based on field data collected by the author in the northern Baikal region of the Republic of Buryatia from the Evenki of the village of Kholodnaia. A distinctive feature of this monograph is an important methodological change, as the subject of the study is the process of the Evenkis’ movement and their mobility. The dynamic perspective made it possible to analyze the objects of stationary and mobile Evenki structures as embedded in a complex network of movements connecting a number of places. The author rejected the rigid dichotomy between sedentary and mobile populations and, accordingly, between the village and the taiga, as well as between Evenki and other villagers who use space in a similar way. As a theoretical approach, V.N. Davydov uses A. Escobar’s concept of ‘life projects’ of the local population vs. development projects and the phenomenological approach of T. Ingold. For centuries, the Evenkis have been involved in the life of the Russian state and in various development projects that they adapt to their life-sustaining practices, ways, and methods of movement. The Evenki village is shown as a space of intense internal mobility, and some of its inhabitants’ “opportunistic” lifestyles are examined for the first time. V. N. Davydov emphasizes that the inhabitants have adapted to the development projects to realize their life projects connected with the task of maintaining the connection to nature and society. The Evenkis use new infrastructures to move around the landscape regularly and have adopted various innovations in modern society. At the same time, they have preserved the Evenkis ethos of mutual aid, creativity, and sociality.

Keywords: Northern Baikal Evenkis, village of Kholodnaia, socio-economic changes, use of space, resources, mobility