The results of our collaborative research are posted here as they become available. Results of individual research projects will also be posted on the individual project pages.

NEWREL team members have not only begun to produce individual results from their research, but have also begun to collaborate with one another to produce comparative results. The first public venue for presenting these results was the Sixth International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VI), held in  Nuuk Greenland, 22-26 August (http://www.icass.gl/ ).

Below is the abstract of the panel in which our work was presented, as well as the individual abstracts for the papers - many of them jointly authored - that we presented at the conference.

CREATIVE USE OF RELIGIOSITY IN THE NORTH: APPROACHING CHANGE AMONG RUSSIAN (SUB-)ARCTIC COMMUNITIES THROUGH RELIGION

Panel for ICASS VI in Nuuk, Greenland, 22-26 August 2008

Summary:  Post-Soviet studies of social change in the Russian North have mainly focused on the socioeconomic and political dynamics of this phenomenon. Without neglecting these aspects, this session seeks to explore contemporary changes by presenting the variety of religious movements that has flourished from the Finnish border to the Bering Sea since glasnost’ (revival of Russian Orthodoxy, (neo-)shamanisms, evangelical protestant groups, new age spiritualities, Mormons, Bahais, “ekstra-sens” practitioners, etc.). We invite contributors who can help highlight the creative use of religiosity in the Russian North today by identifying the nature of religious life in various cultural and historical contexts, and by documenting the dynamics of religious change among contemporary Arctic and sub-Arctic mixed communities. Participants are encouraged to focus on the “in-between” religious phenomena that have emerged more or less recently at the interstices of institutionalized religions in connection with rapid social change. In a comparative perspective, the papers of this session will examine the following topics: the relationship between social organization and religiosity; the “inside” of religiosity (motivations, expressions, etc.); connections between religious and non-religious aspects of social life (where is the border?); verbality/literacy/language issues (durability of religious literary forms, consciousness of religious literacy, etc.); discourses about “authenticity” (what is a “true” believer?) and belongingness (what causes a sense of belonging in any religious practice?); ethnicity & religion; legitimacy & authority (from a religious perspective). Papers which emphasize the “doing” of religion, and which explore the moral, intellectual, analytical and methodological implications that the study of religious change has in a reflexive approach, are especially welcome.

RELIGION IN SUBVERSIVE SPACES: THE EMERGENCE OF ALTERNATIVE RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES IN MAGADAN, RUSSIA
Patty A. Gray
Alexandra S. Antohin

Summary: A defining element of the ‘religio-scape’ of Russia in the 1990s was the heavy inflow of foreign missionaries, who were to a large extent welcomed, especially when they also couriered humanitarian aid. The city of Magadan received this inflow, and was also a significant gateway to indigenous populations in rural areas. Fifteen years later, the general religious context in the city has shifted, such that outside influences have been squeezed out ideologically as well as practically, and a more historically ‘Russian’ religious identity oriented toward Orthodoxy is emerging in some quarters. Pushing beyond a post-Soviet ideology of morality and citizenship toward a reconstructed Russian one has been a key concern for institutions such as the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church, who actively perpetuate the notion that to be Russian is to be Orthodox (and vice-versa). For a place like Magadan, many of whose residents are exiles and their descendants, such a hegemonic creed does not hold up, neither for adherents of Orthodoxy nor for adherents of other variations of Christianity. For some, religious identification and expression in Magadan has taken on an ‘underground’ quality, while others strive to legitimize alternative religious expressions. This paper explores how this national pseudo-policy on Russian spiritual culture has altered people’s religious practices locally, and examines how the state’s influence on religious culture motivates some believers to seek different forms of religious consciousness.


NOTES ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A NEW ORTHODOX PRIEST AND A LOCAL COMMUNITY IN THE UST-KULOM REGION OF KOMI REPUBLIC, RUSSIA
Art Leete
Piret Koosa

Summary: We conducted joint fieldwork in the Ust-Kulom region of Komi Republic in 2006 and 2007. We prepared a questionnaire, an essential part of which was dedicated to religious topics. This is in accordance with the research plan of the BOREAS programme’s project “New Religious Movements in the Russian North: Competing Uses of Religiosity after Socialism” (NEWREL). We treated these fieldwork trips as a pilot phase of our part of the project and attempted to collect some preliminary data about the contemporary religious situation in the district and about religious feelings among the local Komi population. We queried mostly the indigenous inhabitants of the area, but made also a several-hours-long interview with a new local Orthodox priest (who has been resident in Ust-Kulom since September, 2006). Among other topics, we mapped mutual opinions (priest’s attitude towards local people and vice versa). We analyse the ways that village people describe their expectations concerning their new priest and what the priest thinks about these expectations. The second analysed topic is the description of the local community, given by the priest. And finally, we provide some of our own impressions about the dialogue between the traditional northern orthodox Komi community and their new priest.


REVIVING OF SHAMANIC PRACTICES AMONG THE SIBERIAN KHANTY AND NANAY
Tatiana Bulkagova
Anna-Leena Siikala

Summary: Neoshamanism and revival of shamanic practices is a popular topic of research (Valentina Kharitonova, Caroline Humphrey, Mihály Hoppál, etc.). However, researchers of neoshamanism have not taken into account the diversity of ideas and forms behind different local and ethnic shamanic institutions. Because the traditional shamanic institutions varied in Siberia, the reawakening of shamanistic practices has also different forms. In our paper, we approach shamanhood/shamanism in two different cultural settings: among the Eastern Siberian Nanay and the North-West Siberian Khanty. In dealing with these two different shamanic systems, we analyze their connection to tradition and new media, ideology, ritual practices and symbols. We trace and compare the concrete historical processes of the transition from traditional shamanism to neoshamanism in the two regions and reveal both the traditional shamans’ thoughts about the new phenomena and the neoshamans’ attitude to the tradition. Interpretations are based on the knowledge of the local society, ethnic culture and the ideological climate of people concerned. We also pay attention to co-operation and conflicts in local religious contexts and ask how shamans serve their society: who are their clients, supporters and opponents.


MAGIC, SCIENCE AND RELIGION OF THE LAST TESTAMENT CHURCH: KNOWLEDGE AND POWER IN A SIBERIAN RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
Alexander Panchenko
Sergey Shtyrkov

Summary: This paper deals with social construction and use of knowledge in the multicultural context of new religious movements in contemporary Siberia. Sociological theories of secularization or, using Max Weber’s term, of the ‘disenchantment of the world’ in the 19th and 20th centuries proceed, as a rule, from the strict opposition between ‘religious’ (or ‘irrational’) and ‘scientific’ (or ‘rational’) world views or explanatory models. It appears, however, that contemporary religious communities usually do not represent themselves and their teachings in terms of credo quia absurdum est. Moreover, many new religious movements rely heavily on ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’ arguments legitimizing spiritual dogma and social order. The Last Testament Church is a religious community founded by amateur artist and former policeman Sergey Torop in Minusinsk (Krasnoyarskii krai) in 1991. The movement’s leader is venerated by his followers as Christ and his activities are considered to be the Second Coming. The teaching of the Last Testament Church includes elements of Christianity and other world religions along with various forms of the New Age spirituality. Remarkably enough, many dogmatic, ritual, social and spiritual patterns of the movement’s culture are represented and discussed by its followers as related to quasi- or para-scientific hypotheses and theories. The construction and use of knowledge in this religious context appeals both to natural and social sciences, from physics and biology to history and ethnology. The analysis of ‘re-enchanted rationality’ of this religious community allows us to revise and rework the classical anthropological triad of magic, science and religion as discussed by Bronislaw Malinowski.


BECOMING CHRISTIANS “AT THE END OF THE LAND”: MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN PROTESTANTS AND NENETS IN THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC
Eva Toulouze
Tatiana Vagramenko
Laur Vallikivi

Summary: This paper focuses on the Christianisation of the indigenous population of the Russian Arctic in the post-soviet period. We compare missionary encounters in two neighbouring regions (the European Nenets and the Yamal Nenets) in the borderlands of Siberia where the most successful in winning converts among reindeer herders and village people are Baptists and Pentecostals. This paper aims at discussing what the motives for conversion are for the Nenets and how they create collective and individual agency in these encounters. We show how the earlier experience with the Orthodox Church in the 19th century has partly shaped the Nenets’ reactions to contemporary Protestant missionisation. We also argue that the indigenous people both as subjects of tsarist Russia and as citizens of postsoviet Russia (independent herders, collectivised herders, villagers) cope with incoming ideas and practices in various ways. These ways depend on the Nenets’ experience with the state (e.g. official [anti-]religious discourse) but also on their understanding of the missionaries’ relations to the state. Also, a deeper integration to the “Russian world” through conversion has offered a chance for the Nenets to move between different spaces that enable or prescribe different modes of action perceived to be contextually more benefitting. As the case of the Nenets proves, conversion to Christianity may become attractive for the individuals and local communities challenged by the problems and expectations of a globalising world, in which new perspectives on immediate and delayed return are opened.


RELIGIOUS SPECIALIZATION AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST: RE-ASSESSING “FAMILIAL SHAMANISM”
Patrick Plattet
Virginie Vaté

Summary: Since the 1990s, inhabitants of the Russian North have shown a growing interest in various forms of spirituality, religious experience and religious institutions. In Northern Kamchatka and in neighboring Chukotka, Protestant denominations in particular have contributed to the rearrangement of the religious landscape of indigenous peoples, which, in the past, was oriented predominantly toward “familial shamanism”. This paper seeks to re-examine assumptions regarding the “familial” dimension of religious life in this region. Through a series of comparative case studies, it will analyze the modes of religious adaptation that have emerged during Soviet and post-Soviet times among the Koryaks and the Chukchis. Drawing on both first hand ethnographical data gathered and older archival and published sources, the authors aim to provide answers to the following questions: To what extent are members of the Protestant churches mobilizing familial modes of organization and structuration? What do notions of religious specialization and religious authority mean in a context where the institutionalization of specialists is not necessarily required? And, if the Protestant worldview needs to be analyzed in light of ritual practices that have been present for much longer in the Russian Far East (related either to hunting life or to herding life), can the approach used to study “New Religious Movements” also help us to renew our understanding of Chukchi and Koriak varieties of shamanism?


RECREATION OF HEROIC PAST: SAKHA SHAMANIC ROCK, RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
Aimar Ventsel

Summary: Rock music in the Far East Sakha, mixed with folklore and usage of shamanic melodies, dates back to the 1970s. This music has always been very popular among ethnic Sakha and was often hailed by Sakha intellectuals as part of the modern Sakha culture. In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, shamanic rock became also well known in European Russia and outside of the former Soviet Union. In my paper I discuss Sakha shamanic rock today. The shamanic rock artists are very aware of Sakha ethnic culture and mix into their music symbols and elements that emphasize what is been viewed as the "heroic past" of the Sakha nation: great warriors, powerful shamans, elements of the national epos Olonkhoo. They represent the approach that shamanism is an important part of the Sakha culture and see themselves as carriers of this Sakha culture. At the same time, using shamanism, history and folklore in their music, they argue that this is the way to oppose Westernization and commercialization of Sakha culture. I show that this position is very ambivalent because artists are very interested in commercial success.

PAST AND PRESENT FORMS OF RELIGIOSITY IN ITELMEN HISTORY
Viktoria V. Petrasheva
David Koester

Summary : In 1994, when plans were being made for the now famous Itelmen festival, Alkhalalalai, in the village of Kovran, the local Russian Orthodox priest made it known that he was concerned about the part of the ritual in which participants were absolved of their sins. Absolution of sins was, in his view, the province of the Church. No clash of spiritual authority with the Orthodox Church was intended. This cleansing rite was mentioned in the earliest descriptions of Kamchatkan ritual practice and it was from these writings, with the wave of indigenous activism that began in the 1980s, that the forgotten festival and accompanying rites were revitalized. The Orthodox Church, for its own part, has a long and deep connection with Itelmen cultural life over the past 300 years. Recently, with the revitalization of the Orthodoxy in Russia, many Itelmens have found an important source of spiritual connection in the church. This paper presents the contrasting effects of revitalization when on the one hand connected with institutionalized religion and on the other hand connected with conscious indigenous revitalization. Sources for new and revitalized modes of spirituality include written ethnographic accounts, ritual practices, personal memory and institutionalized (church) ritual. We describe the role of these various strands of religiosity in the context of cultural and religious revitalization.

SHAMANISM WITHOUT SHAMANS : SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS OF A DISTINCTIVE VIEW OF THE WORLD (NORTHEAST SIBERIA)
Piers Vitebsky

Summary: Even while the Soviet regime persecuted shamans, certain aspects of the shamanic worldview persisted. Many of these concerned uncertainties and anxieties which could not be soothed by the Soviet state's rationalist forms of control and assurance. In the ansences of shamans, these took do-it-yourself forms such as divination from fire, from dreams and from the behaviour of animals. Meanwhile, the children of the persecuted shamans suffered from identity crises and the repression of their love for their parents, and these were only partially resolved by becoming musicians or doctors. The officially-sanctioned neo-shamanic revival of the early 1990s, with its nationalist agenda, largely missed the point. Rather, there has emerged a range of forms of frustration, hesitance and transformation of a 'shamanic impulse' which affects certain families and personalities.