Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-103-129
Aleksandra Zakharova
The article analyzes the classifications of the residents of settlements used by rural bureaucrats (employees of rural administrations and members of their teams). The analysis is based on materials gathered through participant observation in two rural settlements in southwestern Siberia. The principles by which the “characters” of villages are distinguished are examined, i.e. in what contexts a “moral cartography” of localities takes place. The study shows that the most frequent differentiating features in the bureaucratic characterization of villages are: 1) the independence of residents in solving their problems or addressing the requirements of the administration; 2) cohesion and willingness to help bureaucrats in governance or lack thereof. These classification signs indicate the “problematic nature” of the village for rural bureaucrats, i.e. the possibility of conflicts, complaints and claims. The author concludes that one of the functions of the bureaucratic classification of villages is contingency coping strategy, which is characteristic of the task-oriented work of rural bureaucrats. Knowledge of the “character” of the inhabitants of settlements allows officials to form expectations, develop work strategies and explain managerial successes and failures. In addition, the ability to map the social space of a village is important for confirming the status of rural governors and especially the heads of rural administrations. Faced daily with a shortage of administrative and material resources, rural bureaucrats find their own intermediate positions to be vulnerable. However, the “proper” knowledge of social space allows them seemingly to reverse their dependent position. As for governors responsible for space, the classifications of villages give local officials an opportunity to demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the territory, thereby testifying to their status as “owners” (khozyaeva) of the land.
{"title":"Moral Cartography: Classifications of Village Residents in the Everyday Life of Rural Bureaucrats","authors":"Aleksandra Zakharova","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-103-129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-103-129","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyzes the classifications of the residents of settlements used by rural bureaucrats (employees of rural administrations and members of their teams). The analysis is based on materials gathered through participant observation in two rural settlements in southwestern Siberia. The principles by which the “characters” of villages are distinguished are examined, i.e. in what contexts a “moral cartography” of localities takes place. The study shows that the most frequent differentiating features in the bureaucratic characterization of villages are: 1) the independence of residents in solving their problems or addressing the requirements of the administration; 2) cohesion and willingness to help bureaucrats in governance or lack thereof. These classification signs indicate the “problematic nature” of the village for rural bureaucrats, i.e. the possibility of conflicts, complaints and claims. The author concludes that one of the functions of the bureaucratic classification of villages is contingency coping strategy, which is characteristic of the task-oriented work of rural bureaucrats. Knowledge of the “character” of the inhabitants of settlements allows officials to form expectations, develop work strategies and explain managerial successes and failures. In addition, the ability to map the social space of a village is important for confirming the status of rural governors and especially the heads of rural administrations. Faced daily with a shortage of administrative and material resources, rural bureaucrats find their own intermediate positions to be vulnerable. However, the “proper” knowledge of social space allows them seemingly to reverse their dependent position. As for governors responsible for space, the classifications of villages give local officials an opportunity to demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the territory, thereby testifying to their status as “owners” (khozyaeva) of the land.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"23 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139193327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-197-206
Natalia Kosyak
This collective monograph, edited by O. P. Kolomiets and I. I. Krupnik, is dedicated to the memory of the colonial administrator of the Anadyr district Nikolai L. Gondatti as one of the founders of the ethnographic study of Chukotka. The collection of papers is the result of the work of a team of 18 authors and includes texts of different genres: analytical works, including historical and sociolinguistic papers, publications of archival documents by N. L. Gondatti, field essays, memoirs, biographical sketches, essays, letters, and articles about museum collections. In addition to the biography and heritage of Gondatti, the authors focus on traditional ecological knowledge, the local history of the settlements of Chukotka, indigenous languages, and cultural heritage. The authors propose rethinking the concept of applied ethnology and understanding it more broadly. The book is an example of co-authorship with representatives of indigenous communities. The review provides an overview of the chapters of the monograph, the structural features, and genre diversity of the articles in the book. Also in focus is the authors’ understanding of the term “applied ethnology” and, in particular, the expansion of this concept.
这本由 O. P. Kolomiets 和 I. I. Krupnik 编辑的集体专著是为了纪念阿纳德尔地区的殖民管理者尼古拉?贡达提，他是楚科奇人种学研究的奠基人之一。这本论文集是由 18 位作者组成的团队的工作成果，包括不同体裁的文章：分析性作品，包括历史和社会语言学论文、尼古拉-L-刚达提档案文件出版物、田野散文、回忆录、传记素描、散文、书信以及有关博物馆藏品的文章。除了刚达提的传记和遗产外，作者还重点介绍了传统生态知识、楚科奇居住区的当地历史、土著语言和文化遗产。作者建议重新思考应用民族学的概念，并对其进行更广泛的理解。该书是与土著社区代表共同撰写的范例。这篇评论概述了专著的章节、结构特征以及书中文章的体裁多样性。重点还包括作者对 "应用民族学 "一词的理解，特别是对这一概念的扩展。
{"title":"A Review of O. P. Kolomiets, I. I. Krupnik (eds.), Applied Ethnology in Chukotka: Indigenous Knowledge, Museums, Cultural Heritage (Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of Nikolai L. Gondatti’s 1895 Trip to the Chukchi Peninsula). Moscow: PressPass, 2020, 468 pp.","authors":"Natalia Kosyak","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-197-206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-197-206","url":null,"abstract":"This collective monograph, edited by O. P. Kolomiets and I. I. Krupnik, is dedicated to the memory of the colonial administrator of the Anadyr district Nikolai L. Gondatti as one of the founders of the ethnographic study of Chukotka. The collection of papers is the result of the work of a team of 18 authors and includes texts of different genres: analytical works, including historical and sociolinguistic papers, publications of archival documents by N. L. Gondatti, field essays, memoirs, biographical sketches, essays, letters, and articles about museum collections. In addition to the biography and heritage of Gondatti, the authors focus on traditional ecological knowledge, the local history of the settlements of Chukotka, indigenous languages, and cultural heritage. The authors propose rethinking the concept of applied ethnology and understanding it more broadly. The book is an example of co-authorship with representatives of indigenous communities. The review provides an overview of the chapters of the monograph, the structural features, and genre diversity of the articles in the book. Also in focus is the authors’ understanding of the term “applied ethnology” and, in particular, the expansion of this concept.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139190990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-155-170
A. Orekhov
The paper investigates the process of the genesis and establishment of infrastructural ideas that contribute to the dissemination of Islamic knowledge in the local Muslim community in the town of Bor, Nizhny Novgorod region in the period of the 1930s — early 2020s. The author analyzes how the infrastructure affects the practices of spreading Islamic knowledge in the local Islamic community and how the local Muslim community changes in the period of creation of infrastructure. The paper focuses on exploring the infrastructures for spreading Islamic knowledge in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods of the community’s life. The study is based on ethnographic material, interviews and archival materials, and presents how the creation of infrastructures changed the practices of spreading Islamic knowledge and the configuration of the local Muslim community. These changes exacerbated issues of power relations and the identifying of behaviour patterns within the community. Simultaneously new ideas were born within the community about community development, new infrastructure for disseminating Islamic knowledge and the formation of Muslim personalities. The Tatar community who initiated and organized the building of the Mosque has lost control over it, and it has become part of urban public space, a source of Islamic knowledge available to any Muslim in the town of Bor.
{"title":"The Evolution of Infrastructures and Practices for the Dissemination of Islamic Knowledge: The Case of the Muslim Community of the Town of Bor, Nizhny Novgorod Region","authors":"A. Orekhov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-155-170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-155-170","url":null,"abstract":"The paper investigates the process of the genesis and establishment of infrastructural ideas that contribute to the dissemination of Islamic knowledge in the local Muslim community in the town of Bor, Nizhny Novgorod region in the period of the 1930s — early 2020s. The author analyzes how the infrastructure affects the practices of spreading Islamic knowledge in the local Islamic community and how the local Muslim community changes in the period of creation of infrastructure. The paper focuses on exploring the infrastructures for spreading Islamic knowledge in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods of the community’s life. The study is based on ethnographic material, interviews and archival materials, and presents how the creation of infrastructures changed the practices of spreading Islamic knowledge and the configuration of the local Muslim community. These changes exacerbated issues of power relations and the identifying of behaviour patterns within the community. Simultaneously new ideas were born within the community about community development, new infrastructure for disseminating Islamic knowledge and the formation of Muslim personalities. The Tatar community who initiated and organized the building of the Mosque has lost control over it, and it has become part of urban public space, a source of Islamic knowledge available to any Muslim in the town of Bor.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"33 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139192067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-173-184
Olesya Merkulova
The analytical framework of an ethnographic study of the lives of Vietnamese migrants in Russia by Professor Lan Anh Hoang (University of Melbourne) is “uncertainty”. The author understands it as the structural conditions that make the lives of migrants unpredictable and eliminate their ability to influence their choices and the results of their choices. The uncertainty is caused by the migration regime in Russia and xenophobia, pushing migrants into the informal sector of the economy and the zone of invisibility. It is also experienced by migrants as a subjective experience of vulnerability. To reveal the duality of uncertainty as a structural condition and as a subjective experience, Hoang devotes the first part of the book to the main themes of migrants’ lives in Russia: moving to the host country, infrastructure for migrants, work and leisure. The second part of the book is built around traditional anthropological themes: kinship, morality, cultural ideas and how they are determined in structural conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability. Despite the fact that Russia is one of the leading countries in the number of labor migrants, there are very few studies of migration in Russia, and there are practically no ethnographies. The book under review is a rare opportunity to have a glimpse of the life of migrants not from the outside perspective of the host society with its labeling, but from the inside. At the same time, the chosen frame of uncertainty not only sets the logic of the analysis, but also prevents the rich ethnography from disintegrating into separate small research discoveries. The book shows how uncertainty runs deep, how it undermines the foundations of human relationships, and how Vietnamese migrants try to cope with it.
Lan Anh Hoang 教授（墨尔本大学）对俄罗斯越南移民生活的人种学研究的分析框架是 "不确定性"。作者将其理解为使移民的生活变得不可预测的结构性条件，消除了他们影响自己的选择和选择结果的能力。这种不确定性是由俄罗斯的移民制度和仇外心理造成的，将移民推向了非正规经济部门和隐蔽地带。不确定性也是移民的主观弱势体验。为了揭示不确定性作为结构性条件和主观体验的双重性，Hoang 在本书的第一部分专门讨论了移民在俄罗斯生活的主要主题：移居东道国、移民基础设施、工作和休闲。该书的第二部分围绕传统人类学主题展开：亲属关系、道德、文化观念，以及它们如何在不确定性和脆弱性的结构条件下被决定。尽管俄罗斯是劳动力移民数量最多的国家之一，但有关俄罗斯移民的研究却寥寥无几，而且几乎没有民族志。这本书为我们提供了一个难得的机会，让我们不是从贴有标签的东道国社会的外部视角，而是从内部来了解移民的生活。同时，所选择的 "不确定性 "框架不仅确定了分析的逻辑，而且防止了丰富的人种学研究分解成单独的小研究发现。该书展示了不确定性如何深入人心，如何破坏人际关系的基础，以及越南移民如何努力应对不确定性。
{"title":"A Review of Lan Anh Hoang, Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020, 259 pp.","authors":"Olesya Merkulova","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-173-184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-173-184","url":null,"abstract":"The analytical framework of an ethnographic study of the lives of Vietnamese migrants in Russia by Professor Lan Anh Hoang (University of Melbourne) is “uncertainty”. The author understands it as the structural conditions that make the lives of migrants unpredictable and eliminate their ability to influence their choices and the results of their choices. The uncertainty is caused by the migration regime in Russia and xenophobia, pushing migrants into the informal sector of the economy and the zone of invisibility. It is also experienced by migrants as a subjective experience of vulnerability. To reveal the duality of uncertainty as a structural condition and as a subjective experience, Hoang devotes the first part of the book to the main themes of migrants’ lives in Russia: moving to the host country, infrastructure for migrants, work and leisure. The second part of the book is built around traditional anthropological themes: kinship, morality, cultural ideas and how they are determined in structural conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability. Despite the fact that Russia is one of the leading countries in the number of labor migrants, there are very few studies of migration in Russia, and there are practically no ethnographies. The book under review is a rare opportunity to have a glimpse of the life of migrants not from the outside perspective of the host society with its labeling, but from the inside. At the same time, the chosen frame of uncertainty not only sets the logic of the analysis, but also prevents the rich ethnography from disintegrating into separate small research discoveries. The book shows how uncertainty runs deep, how it undermines the foundations of human relationships, and how Vietnamese migrants try to cope with it.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"27 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139193525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We publish here an interview with George Levinton, a prominent specialist in philology, folklore and literary criticism, professor at the European University at St Petersburg, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Professor Levinton recalls his teachers and those who influenced his academic trajectory: his father Akhill Levinton, Vladimir Toporov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Boris Uspensky, Kirill Taranovsky. He talks about his academic career, atypical for a scholar in Soviet times, and about the institutions he worked in. He talks about the James Bond novels that helped him learn English and explains why he never worked ‘in the field’. Levinton’s interlocutors asked him to explain where the ‘wedding’ topic came from, and how he felt working with his co-authors (such as Albert Baiburin, Nikita Okhotin, Alexander Dolinin, Yury Kleiner, Viktor Lapin), and why he stopped teaching a course in poetics. They also tried to find out which of his numerous publications he considered the most important methodologically for science and for himself.
{"title":"“Let me write a thesis on folklore to get away from folklore…”: An Interview with George Levinton","authors":"Svetlana Nikolaeva, Svetlana Podrezova, Natalia Slavgorodskaya","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-209-257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-209-257","url":null,"abstract":"We publish here an interview with George Levinton, a prominent specialist in philology, folklore and literary criticism, professor at the European University at St Petersburg, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Professor Levinton recalls his teachers and those who influenced his academic trajectory: his father Akhill Levinton, Vladimir Toporov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Boris Uspensky, Kirill Taranovsky. He talks about his academic career, atypical for a scholar in Soviet times, and about the institutions he worked in. He talks about the James Bond novels that helped him learn English and explains why he never worked ‘in the field’. Levinton’s interlocutors asked him to explain where the ‘wedding’ topic came from, and how he felt working with his co-authors (such as Albert Baiburin, Nikita Okhotin, Alexander Dolinin, Yury Kleiner, Viktor Lapin), and why he stopped teaching a course in poetics. They also tried to find out which of his numerous publications he considered the most important methodologically for science and for himself.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"9 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139194301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-130-152
Dmitrii Serebrennikov
One of the classic research questions of street-level bureaucracy studies is the question of the discretion of the officials when making a decision. In recent decades, the discussion about such bureaucrats has changed. Research has focused on new forms of bureaucracy, e.g., screen-level bureaucrats — various dispatchers and operators who receive calls and messages from citizens. Traditionally, such employees are considered to be almost completely deprived of the ability to act independently, and their work is reduced to following a strict algorithm as much as possible. This article employs data from 20 semi-structured interviews and three participant observation sessions in two cases of municipal emergency call centers of the unified “112” hotline. It attempts to elucidate the daily operations of dispatchers and the mechanisms through which they manage to operate within formal constraints while gaining a broader degree of discretion. The discretion exercised by dispatchers has a dual nature. Their core task involves constant communication with representatives from other emergency services, governed by procedural discretion (regulations and instructions). However, in certain circumstances when dealing with incidents, they can shift a situation from “routine” to “emergency”, thereby expanding their operational possibilities. Moreover, the existing frameworks can undergo transformation when there is a higher level of trust between dispatchers from different services. In such cases, when interacting with other authorities, the dispatcher’s actions are constrained less by rules and more by unspoken conventions, which can vary in different interactions depending on the level of trust between the conversing parties.
{"title":"From Call to Emergency Card: Looking for Discretion of “112” Operators","authors":"Dmitrii Serebrennikov","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-130-152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-130-152","url":null,"abstract":"One of the classic research questions of street-level bureaucracy studies is the question of the discretion of the officials when making a decision. In recent decades, the discussion about such bureaucrats has changed. Research has focused on new forms of bureaucracy, e.g., screen-level bureaucrats — various dispatchers and operators who receive calls and messages from citizens. Traditionally, such employees are considered to be almost completely deprived of the ability to act independently, and their work is reduced to following a strict algorithm as much as possible. This article employs data from 20 semi-structured interviews and three participant observation sessions in two cases of municipal emergency call centers of the unified “112” hotline. It attempts to elucidate the daily operations of dispatchers and the mechanisms through which they manage to operate within formal constraints while gaining a broader degree of discretion. The discretion exercised by dispatchers has a dual nature. Their core task involves constant communication with representatives from other emergency services, governed by procedural discretion (regulations and instructions). However, in certain circumstances when dealing with incidents, they can shift a situation from “routine” to “emergency”, thereby expanding their operational possibilities. Moreover, the existing frameworks can undergo transformation when there is a higher level of trust between dispatchers from different services. In such cases, when interacting with other authorities, the dispatcher’s actions are constrained less by rules and more by unspoken conventions, which can vary in different interactions depending on the level of trust between the conversing parties.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"31 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139189602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-185-196
I. Nikitina
Eugenia Roussou studies the phenomenon of the evil eye in Greece. Based on long-term fieldwork in Thessaloniki and Rethymno, her main claims are that religious attitudes in contemporary Greece are a result of significant shift. In her opinion, Orthodoxy and New Age spirituality are not now “at cultural war”, and attitudes to the evil eye are the finest example of this reconciliation. Unfortunately, the entire text is nothing more than an illustration. The ethnographic descriptions are rich, but rather one-sided. Almost all of author’s interlocutors were neutral or positive towards New Age and new religious movements. Also, Roussou did not include interviews with priests in her research, which significantly distorted the picture. The theoretical framework of this monograph goes against the described material, because of the author’s desire to avoid all sorts of contradictions. She claims to adopt the framework of vernacular religiosity in her monograph, but does not follow this line either in terms or in material.
{"title":"A Review of Eugenia Roussou, Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: The Evil Eye in Greece. London: Bloombsbury, 2021, XII+196 pp.","authors":"I. Nikitina","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-185-196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-185-196","url":null,"abstract":"Eugenia Roussou studies the phenomenon of the evil eye in Greece. Based on long-term fieldwork in Thessaloniki and Rethymno, her main claims are that religious attitudes in contemporary Greece are a result of significant shift. In her opinion, Orthodoxy and New Age spirituality are not now “at cultural war”, and attitudes to the evil eye are the finest example of this reconciliation. Unfortunately, the entire text is nothing more than an illustration. The ethnographic descriptions are rich, but rather one-sided. Almost all of author’s interlocutors were neutral or positive towards New Age and new religious movements. Also, Roussou did not include interviews with priests in her research, which significantly distorted the picture. The theoretical framework of this monograph goes against the described material, because of the author’s desire to avoid all sorts of contradictions. She claims to adopt the framework of vernacular religiosity in her monograph, but does not follow this line either in terms or in material.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"47 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139196019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-48-72
Nikita Mishakov
Needs assessment (oсenka nuzhdaemosti) is a legal procedure in the Russian welfare system to determine whether citizens qualify for social benefits and, if so, to what extent. The article examines one of the Russian state agencies conducting this procedure. Public officials of the agency examined are typical “street-level bureaucrats” according to Michael Lipsky’s definition. They interact with citizens face to face and determine in what form certain services will be provided by the state and whether they will be provided at all. The creation of the agency has meant a redistribution of power in the social sphere in the region, a fragmentation of the process of prescribing and delivering social care and, at least formally, a stricter separation between the decision-making process and the work carried out according to it. The article analyses how, in the face of this fragmentation, as well as the introduction of new tools for automating decision-making, the space of discretion — the ability at a local level to influence and, in some cases, determine the way work is carried out — is preserved. The research was carried out using qualitative methods, predominantly through interviews. In addition, documents were analyzed and observation was conducted. The author demonstrates how the emerging “gaps” in the social sphere are overcome and the professional and ethical categories of the bureaucrats determine the implementation of the needs assessment process, in particular the evaluation procedures.
需求评估（oсenka nuzhdaemosti）是俄罗斯福利制度中的一项法律程序，用于确定公民是否有资格享受社会福利，以及如果有资格，享受的程度如何。本文对执行这一程序的俄罗斯国家机构之一进行了研究。根据 Michael Lipsky 的定义，该机构的公职人员是典型的 "基层官僚"。他们与公民面对面交流，决定国家以何种形式提供某些服务，以及是否提供这些服务。该机构的成立意味着该地区社会领域权力的重新分配、社会服务的规定和提供过程的分散，以及至少在形式上，决策过程和根据决策过程开展的工作之间更严格的分离。文章分析了在这种分散化的情况下，以及在引入决策自动化新工具的情况下，如何保留自由裁量权的空间，即在地方一级影响并在某些情况下决定工作开展方式的能力。研究采用定性方法，主要通过访谈进行。此外，还分析了文件并进行了观察。作者展示了如何克服社会领域新出现的 "差距"，以及官僚的职业和道德类别如何决定需求评估过程的实施，特别是评估程序。
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Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-11-47
Aleksandra Zakharova, Alexandra Martynenko
This article precedes a selection of papers written as a result of the seminar on the anthropology of bureaucracy in modern Russia. The text offers a brief overview of the development of research into bureaucracy, where studies are mainly made in a polemic with Max Weber’s model of the “ideal” bureaucracy. It considers the most significant works that preceded the emergence of an interest in bureaucracy on the part of social scientists, written in the fields of political science and sociology and united by the method of participant observation. The authors pay attention to the difficulties in distinguishing the anthropology of bureaucracy as an independent field, which, on the one hand, is integrated into political anthropology and on the other hand, tends towards the social studies of professions. The article suggests understanding the anthropology of bureaucracy primarily as a certain viewpoint focusing on how management is implemented and how the “state” is reproduced and felt within bureaucratic institutions. The authors distinguish several popular areas in the field of social research into bureaucracy: critical works analyzing primarily the structural violence of bureaucrats against citizens through client classifications, bureaucratic arbitrariness, etc.; works that focus on the moral and affective aspect of bureaucracy, including the moral dilemmas of employees and their feelings; works devoted to the material world of bureaucracy, where documents become important participants in social interaction; research on the experience of interaction with bureaucracy as a client. In addition, the article provides an overview of existing studies (mainly) of the street-level Russian bureaucracy, performed using anthropological methods within the boundaries of different disciplines.
{"title":"On Leviathan’s Tail: Anthropological Studies of Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats","authors":"Aleksandra Zakharova, Alexandra Martynenko","doi":"10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-11-47","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-11-47","url":null,"abstract":"This article precedes a selection of papers written as a result of the seminar on the anthropology of bureaucracy in modern Russia. The text offers a brief overview of the development of research into bureaucracy, where studies are mainly made in a polemic with Max Weber’s model of the “ideal” bureaucracy. It considers the most significant works that preceded the emergence of an interest in bureaucracy on the part of social scientists, written in the fields of political science and sociology and united by the method of participant observation. The authors pay attention to the difficulties in distinguishing the anthropology of bureaucracy as an independent field, which, on the one hand, is integrated into political anthropology and on the other hand, tends towards the social studies of professions. The article suggests understanding the anthropology of bureaucracy primarily as a certain viewpoint focusing on how management is implemented and how the “state” is reproduced and felt within bureaucratic institutions. The authors distinguish several popular areas in the field of social research into bureaucracy: critical works analyzing primarily the structural violence of bureaucrats against citizens through client classifications, bureaucratic arbitrariness, etc.; works that focus on the moral and affective aspect of bureaucracy, including the moral dilemmas of employees and their feelings; works devoted to the material world of bureaucracy, where documents become important participants in social interaction; research on the experience of interaction with bureaucracy as a client. In addition, the article provides an overview of existing studies (mainly) of the street-level Russian bureaucracy, performed using anthropological methods within the boundaries of different disciplines.","PeriodicalId":52194,"journal":{"name":"Antropologicheskij Forum","volume":"229 1-2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139189394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.31250/1815-8870-2023-19-59-73-102
N. Shevchenko
This article concerns the working of a nonprofit human rights organization that helps Russian conscripts and their relatives on issues related to military registration. Following the aesthetic approach in research into bureaucracy described by Matthew Hull, the author focuses on the functional elements of the template used in the NGO — the conscript questionnaire. At the same time, an important place in the article is occupied by the issue of documentary time and its organization within the conscription bureaucracy. By analyzing the internal structure and practices of using the questionnaire as a “formal tool”, the text reveals the mechanisms of bureaucratic retemporalization of the health and biography of a young man in the process of setting up his file-self. Drawing a link between the questionnaire and other documentary forms used in the human rights organization, the author demonstrates how these forms embody the logic of the institution of conscription, and how NGO clients use knowledge of the military medical taxonomy of disease in the process of “translating” individual diagnoses and the overall picture of health from the “civilian” to the “military” medical system. The analysis of the structure of the questionnaire and related papers allows the author to ask how the temporality built into the text of the document ensures the credibility of its content on the part of both the citizen and the state.
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