Ethnic stratification: rural enclaves of mountain ecosystems in the south of Russia (19th – early 21st centuries). Methodological aspects of the study

Abstract (English)

The ethnic stratification processes inclusion in the subject area of social anthropology and natives ethnic history of the imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet periods of Russian history defines a number of problems of theoretical and scientific-applied nature.
On the one hand, the change in forms of government, the institution of property, political regimes since the end of the 19th century determined the permanent nature of changes in social communication systems, including ethnic stratification. The national elites reformatting manifested itself in the form of: a) an ethnopolitical process aimed the natives traditional social institutions integrating into national ones; b) a traditional economy models and nature management transformation, especially expressed in the circumpolar zone and mountain ecoregions. Ethnopolitical processes are reflected in Russian historiography. The ethnic component of socio-economic and socio-cultural processes and its determinacy by political processes remained outside the subject area.
On the other hand, the current ethno-social situation in rural enclaves of the mountains of Russia is already characterized by intra-ethnic communications changes aimed at to traditional systems of subsistence returning. This trend, which is global in nature, is part of the subject field of applied anthropology. In this regard, the effectiveness of the methods of US anthropologists (Alaska) can be traced. Those that are aimed at identifying: a) the balance between traditional and innovative systems of subsistence; b) the mechanism of the genesis of "mixed" models of rural economy; c) the mechanism of integration of ethnic entrepreneurship forms into the regional economy. Of interest is the identification of a combination of two intra-ethnic processes. The first is associated with the provision of rural enclaves (through the production cycle) by food products at the expense of the ethnic territory resources. The second, with the social strata reformatting and the nature of their regional market relations system impact.
We conducted field research in the state of Alaska (Gwitchin, Tanana), among the Shors, Teleuts, Telengits, Tofalars (Sayano-Altai ecoregion), Shapsugs (Western Caucasus, Black Sea region) using methods of social and applied anthropology tested in the USA and Russia. The data obtained provide a basis for a comparative analysis of the processes of both ethnic and ethnosocial stratification, manifested at different hierarchical levels (from local to international) both statically and dynamically - when studying processes at the junction of political, socio-economic and ethnic history of the imperial and post-Soviet periods.