Abstract

The wider cultural universe of contemporary Eveny is a specific and revealing subset of post-Soviet society. From an anthropological perspective, the author seeks to reveal not only the Eveny cultural universe but also the universe of the children and adolescents within this universe. The first full-length ethnographic study among the adolescence of Siberian indigenous peoples, it presents the young people’s narratives about their own future and shows how they form constructs of time, space, agency and personhood through the process of growing up and experiencing their social world. The study brings a new perspective to the anthropology of childhood and uncovers a quite unexpected dynamic in narrating and foreshadowing the future while relating it to cultural patterns of prediction and fulfillment in nomadic cosmology.

“This thought-provoking and highly original work, relevant especially for students of the anthropology of childhood, supplies an important new chapter to native Siberian ethnography. Highly recommended for anyone seriously interested in today's Siberia, all levels."  ·  Choice

“This ethnography of young people’s heroic efforts to bring into being a different future marks an important contribution not only to the anthropology of this region, but also to the anthropology of postsocialism. Without doubt, the book will become a widely read ethnography in both of these fields of specialization, but it should also be read as an important addition to the growing body of work on the anthropology of childhood and youth.”  ·  The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“This book is remarkable because of the detailed knowledge of the milieu the author examines (it is her native village), but equally because of the originality of the chosen themes: on the one hand, that of childhood in Siberia, a subject only rarely dealt with; on the other, that of the future which goes against the tendency of anthropologists to study the present in the light of the past.”  ·  L’Homme

“…an original and thought-provoking study [that is]firmly situated in the relevant Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet ethnographic and historical literature… It also makes excellent use of the extensive Russian ethnographic work in this region.”  ·  Julie Cruikshank, University of British Columbia

“…a very good study, compellingly and confidently written, which covered a relatively unknown subject…The ethnography of this book is excellent.”  ·  Heather Montgomery, The Open University, UK

Olga Ulturgasheva is Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. She has carried out fieldwork for a decade in Siberia on childhood, youth, religion, reindeer herding and hunting and coedited Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Berghahn Books 2012).