Le prochain séminaire des études sibériennes / Siberian Studies Seminar aura lieu le mercredi 7 février 2024 de 14h à 16 h. Nous accueillerons Joachim Otto Habeck (professeur à l’Université de Hambourg) pour une présentation (en anglais) intitulée “Arrivals and Departures: The shifting ‘pre-field’ of anthropological research in Russia from an outsider’s perspective“

Résumé.

This presentation will try to sketch out the circumstances of ethnographic work in different socio-political straits, subjectively from the vantage point of someone who grew up in the so-called West and commenced ethnographic research in Russia in the 1990s. I will highlight the important role of what in search for better words I call predpol’e (in Russian), literally the “pre-field”. In Soviet and early post-Soviet times, the predpol’e comprised academic contacts that would (hopefully) facilitate access to certain locations in the actual “field” (pol’e). Located in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the cities along the itinerary to the Far North of Russia, these older and younger colleagues would provide intellectually and emotionally significant support during the Western ethnographer’s journey to and re-emergence from “the field”. However, this notion of predpol’e has become complicated in recent years, particularly so after February 2022. Gates are shut – some of my academic intermediaries have left Russia, to get established at research institutes or universities in Western countries. Many younger scholars also took that direction, and understandably so. For myself, the field (pol’e) “itself” has turned into memories and can be accessed only by remote sensing – contacts have almost come to a standstill – whereas the predpol’e has got much closer, spatially and psychologically, creating new openings and research topics. Looking at these shifts and rifts over time, my aim is to contribute to the analysis of academic practices and hierarchies, and of unequal access to financial resources and social networks in anthropological research.

Le séminaire aura lieu au Campus Condorcet (14 cours des Humanités, 93322 Aubervilliers), en salle 5.067 du bâtiment de recherche nord. Il est également possible d’y assister en ligne.
Métro Front Populaire (Ligne 12) /RER B La Plaine – Stade de France

Dmitriy Oparin (UMR Passages) et Virginie Vaté (GSRL)