Tesi sul tema "Russian communities"

This thesis is a study of the Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), a Russian nationalist movement which emerged in 1993, aiming to reunite all ethnic Russians within an enlarged Russian state. It is argued that the movement failed in its own terms due to ideological contradictions, organisational weaknesses, and counter strategies on the part of the Russian state, but did have a significant influence on Russian state policy, and constitutes a theoretically important phenomenon in the geopolitics of the post-Soviet states. A theoretical framework is developed through a critical review of work on nationalism, also taking into account literature on critical geopolitics, identity, social movements and the state. Nationalism is framed as a geopolitical strategy closely related to the geopolitics of the state system. In order to understand the context within which the KRO emerged, the geopolitics of Russian identity in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and early post Soviet period are discussed. The KRO's ideology is analysed in terms of key discourses which forge a specific form of Russian identity and a programme for geopolitical change. This ideology is contrasted with those of other right wing movements and the policies of the Yeltsin administration. The KRO, and much Russian nationalism in general, is shown to be intimately (yet problematically) related to statism, another important post-Soviet ideology. The KRO's challenge for state power is then analysed. The origins, structure and development of the KRO, and the political careers of its key figures are reviewed. The KRO's emergence from within the Russian right wing, its links with pro-Russian organisations across the post-Soviet states, and its role in the forging of government policy are traced. Counter strategies on the part of Russian state institutions are also considered. The high point of the KRO's challenge came in 1995 with the construction of a broad electoral coalition. The political geography of the coalition and the geography of its performance at the elections to the Russian state Duma are examined and explained, both in terms of the KRO's ideology and organisation, and in comparison with competitor organisations. In conclusion, the consequences of the KRO's challenge for Russian nationalism and the geopolitics of the post-Soviet states in general are considered.

The main aim of this project is to explore the construction of national identity as performed by members of the Russian-speaking communities living in Scotland through the analysis of intergenerational narratives and conversations between parents and their children appearing in families in everyday situations. The subject of the research is the Russian community living in Scotland. This thesis aims to answer the following questions: How do Russian migrants construct and re-construct their Russianness during the constant process of interpretation of the new reality, new country, new culture. In what way do they attempt to exhibit their Russianness to their children in the process of everyday interaction? How do the children respond to these attempts and how do they contribute and co-construct the creation of identity? Which linguistic means and strategies are used to display and pass on the elements of the identity constructed? Are there any patterns used by adults in identity creations or any likely systematic actions undertaken during the identity performances? Do the adults achieve their intended aims, if they have any? The methodological framework of the thesis exploits Foucault’s, Goffman’s and Blumer’s theories in which the identity is seen as a discursive phenomenon created and shaped by interactions appearing in everyday situations. The empirical data are analysed using Bucholtz and Hall’s sociocultural linguistic approach which enables the embedding of the study of interaction in a broader ethnographic context. Moreover, in the analytical part of the thesis the Conversational Analysis, Narrative Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis are employed.

In migration, language undergoes crucial changes. Not only are the linguistic practices of migrants reshaped in the new environment, but migrant displacement has a major effect on the way language users see and talk about language as such, especially in relation to linguistic varieties they encounter or acquire as part of their migrant experiences. Migrants’ transforming attitudes to language also interfere with other, non-linguistic areas of their lives – family relationships, career pathways, networking with fellow migrants, and daily interactions with the host environment. The way a layperson considers ‘their’ language in relation to the language of ‘others’ plays a crucial role in their identity construction – both as a factor and a domain for expression. The sociolinguistic context of a new culture is a defining factor in the transformation of one’s metalinguistic thinking. This thesis focuses on post-Soviet Russian-speaking migrants in the UK and explores their linguistic practices, language attitudes and discourses on language(s) as a key factor in their cultural integration in the host society. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork (in-depth semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and the discourse analysis of printed and online documents) conducted between 2011 and 2014, principally in the North-East of England. The central argument of the thesis is that the cultural phenomenon of ‘Russophonism’ (russkoiazychie) presents a dynamic model which functions in two ways. Firstly, it is a frame to express shared meanings of belonging to the post-Soviet domain, through which individual linguistic identities and community practices are expressed. Russophonism also influences migrants’ on-going relationship with and views of their home countries and the FSU context in general. Secondly, migrants’ understanding of Russophonism is a flexible tool to interpret current migrant experiences and to create new meanings of what being a migrant in the UK implies both for their personal life trajectories and for their self-presentation as a group.

The Arctic is considered as a focal region in the ongoing climate change debate. The currently observed and predicted climate warming is particularly pronounced in the high northern latitudes. Rising temperatures in the Arctic cause progressive deepening and duration of permafrost thawing during the arctic summer, creating an ‘active layer’ with high bioavailability of nutrients and labile carbon for microbial consumption. The microbial mineralization of permafrost carbon creates large amounts of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, which can be released to the atmosphere, creating a positive feedback to global warming. However, to date, the microbial communities that drive the overall carbon cycle and specifically methane production in the Arctic are poorly constrained. To assess how these microbial communities will respond to the predicted climate changes, such as an increase in atmospheric and soil temperatures causing increased bioavailability of organic carbon, it is necessary to investigate the current status of this environment, but also how these microbial communities reacted to climate changes in the past. This PhD thesis investigated three records from two different study sites in the Russian Arctic, including permafrost, lake shore and lake deposits from Siberia and Chukotka. A combined stratigraphic approach of microbial and molecular organic geochemical techniques were used to identify and quantify characteristic microbial gene and lipid biomarkers. Based on this data it was possible to characterize and identify the climate response of microbial communities involved in past carbon cycling during the Middle Pleistocene and the Late Pleistocene to Holocene. It is shown that previous warmer periods were associated with an expansion of bacterial and archaeal communities throughout the Russian Arctic, similar to present day conditions. Different from this situation, past glacial and stadial periods experienced a substantial decrease in the abundance of Bacteria and Archaea. This trend can also be confirmed for the community of methanogenic archaea that were highly abundant and diverse during warm and particularly wet conditions. For the terrestrial permafrost, a direct effect of the temperature on the microbial communities is likely. In contrast, it is suggested that the temperature rise in scope of the glacial-interglacial climate variations led to an increase of the primary production in the Arctic lake setting, as can be seen in the corresponding biogenic silica distribution. The availability of this algae-derived carbon is suggested to be a driver for the observed pattern in the microbial abundance. This work demonstrates the effect of climate changes on the community composition of methanogenic archae. Methanosarcina-related species were abundant throughout the Russian Arctic and were able to adapt to changing environmental conditions. In contrast, members of Methanocellales and Methanomicrobiales were not able to adapt to past climate changes. This PhD thesis provides first evidence that past climatic warming led to an increased abundance of microbial communities in the Arctic, closely linked to the cycling of carbon and methane production. With the predicted climate warming, it may, therefore, be anticipated that extensive amounts of microbial communities will develop. Increasing temperatures in the Arctic will affect the temperature sensitive parts of the current microbiological communities, possibly leading to a suppression of cold adapted species and the prevalence of methanogenic archaea that tolerate or adapt to increasing temperatures. These changes in the composition of methanogenic archaea will likely increase the methane production potential of high latitude terrestrial regions, changing the Arctic from a carbon sink to a source.
Die Arktis ist in den gegenwärtigen Diskussionen zum Klimawandel von besonderem Interesse. Die derzeitig beobachtete globale Erwärmung ist in den hohen nördlichen Breiten besonders ausgeprägt. Dies führt dazu, dass ehemals gefrorene Böden zunehmend tiefer auftauen und daher im Boden enthaltene Kohlenstoffquellen für die mikrobielle Umsetzung und Mineralisierung zur Verfügung stehen. Aufgrund dieser Prozesse entstehen klimarelevant Gase, darunter Kohlendioxid und Methan, die aus den Böden und Sedimenten freigesetzt werden können. Wenn man bedenkt, dass in den nördlichen Permafrostgebieten die Hälfte des weltweit unter der Bodenoberfläche gelagerten Kohlenstoffs gelagert ist, wird die Bedeutung dieser Region für das Verständnis des globalen Kohlenstoffkreislaufes und der möglichen Treibhaus-gasemissionen sichtbar. Trotz dieser Relevanz, sind die am Kohlenstoffumsatz beteiligten Mikroorganismen in der Arktis wenig untersucht und ihre Anpassungsfähigkeit an die gegenwärtigen Klimaveränderungen unbekannt. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht daher, wie sich Klimaveränderungen in der Vergangenheit auf die Anzahl und Zusammensetzung der mikrobiellen Gemeinschaften ausgewirkt haben. Dabei liegt ein besonderer Fokus auf die methanbildenden Archaeen, um das Verständnis der mikrobiellen Methandynamik zu vertiefen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden drei Bohrkerne aus zwei verschiedenen Standorten in der russischen Arktis untersucht, darunter terrestrischer Permafrost und Seesedimente aus Sibirien und Chukotka, Russland. Mittels der Identifikation und Quantifizierung von mikrobiellen Genen und charakteristischen Bestandteilen der mikrobiellen Zellmembran war es möglich, fossile mikrobielle Gemeinschaften in Seesedimenten mit einem Alter von bis zu 480 000 Jahren und in Permafrostablagerungen mit einem Alter von bis zu 42 000 Jahren zu rekonstruieren. Es wurde gezeigt, dass es während vergangener warmen Perioden zu einem Wachstum von Bakterien und Archaeen in allen untersuchten Standorten gekommen ist. Dieser Trend konnte auch für die Gemeinschaft der methanogenen Archaeen gezeigt werden, die während warmen und insbesondere feuchten Klimabedingungen in großer Anzahl und Diversität vorhanden waren, was wiederrum Rückschlüsse auf mögliche Methanemissionen erlaubt. In den terrestrischen Permafroststandorten wird der Temperaturanstieg als direkte Ursache für die gefundene Reaktion der mikrobiellen Gemeinschaft vermutet. Im Gegenzug dazu, führte der Temperaturanstieg im untersuchten arktischen See wahrscheinlich zu einer erhöhten Primärproduktion von organischem Kohlenstoff, die wiederum das Wachstum der Mikroorganismen antrieb. Weiterhin konnte im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gezeigt werden, dass Methanosarcina-verwandte Spezies in der Russischen Arktis weit verbreitet sind und sich an veränderte Umweltbedingungen gut anpassen können. Im Gegensatz dazu stehen Vertreter von Methanocellales und Methano-microbiales, die nicht in der Lage sich an veränderte Lebensbedingungen anzupassen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit konnte erstmalig gezeigt werden, dass es in früheren Warmphasen zu einem vermehrten Wachstum der an der Umsetzung des organischen Kohlenstoffs beteiligten Mikroorganismen in der Russischen Arktis gekommen ist. Im Zusammenhang mit der zukünftigen Erwärmung der Arktis kann also von einer Veränderung der am Kohlenstoffkreislauf beteiligten Mikroorganismen ausgegangen werden kann. Mit den steigenden Temperaturen werden sich einige Vertreter der methanproduzierenden Mikroorganismen an die veränderten Bedingungen anpassen können, während Temperatur-empfindliche Vertreter aus dem Habitat verdrängt werden. Diese Veränderungen in der mikrobiellen Gemeinschaft können die Methanproduktion der hohen noerdlichen Breiten erhoehen und dazu beitragen, dass aus der Arktis als eine Kohlenstoffsenke eine Kohlenstoffquelle wird.

This thesis examines how discourses are utilised by media and political elites to construct, propagate, and alter national and ethnic identities. It uses Latvia as a case study, focusing on the construction of ‘Russian-speaking’ identity from the late Soviet period to the present. A central aim of this research is to study how discursive constructions of identity are created, and to what extent media and politicians are able to influence such constructions. In order to meaningfully assess the extent of multiple influences over discursive production and consumption this research employs a triangulated approach, using data from focus groups, elite interviews with Latvian politicians, survey data, and discourse analysis of the Latvian press. This has allowed for a fuller examination and assessment of top-down and bottom-up influences and pressures on identity creation and how these are interrelated. Previously conducted research on ethnopolitical identities in Latvia has revealed how collective memories, interpretations of the Soviet past, post-Soviet state-building policies, and issues surrounding language usage are all heavily politicised and used to demarcate the boundaries between the ‘core nation’ (Latvians) on the one hand, and ‘Russian-speakers’ on the other. Accordingly, this research explores how the constructions of these positions are negotiated, propagated, intensified, or mitigated through discursive practices, as manifested in media, political, or personal discourses. This research is concerned with the temporally contingent nature of discourses and as such, considers multiple eras, rather than a single de-contextualised and static time period, to investigate how discourses have evolved in the Latvian context. By comparing discursive productions from the late Soviet period with those of the present, it has been possible to examine how certain discursive positions have become meaningfully embedded within popularly conceived notions of identity. It has also facilitated a study of discursive strategies by people who attempt to represent Russian-speakers in the media and political spaces. This research argues that discourses are firmly rooted in the past, even if their contemporary form differs greatly from that of the past.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the high point of class struggle in the twentieth-century. For the first time in world history, a social movement predicated on the overcoming of class exploitation succeeded in gaining state power. In the days and weeks following October 1917 insurrection, a self-declared Marxist government set about the task of constructing a socialist society. However the Russian Revolution was more than the mass political mobilisation of class resentments. In addition to proletarians and peasants, the Bolsheviks also mobilised national minorities, for whom October represented the opportunity to put an end to centuries of national oppression. The Bolshevik promise, therefore, entailed not just class solidarity, but national self-determination and internationalism as well. In the very moment of revolution, however, these sentiments were put to the test as mass outbreaks of antisemitic pogroms spread across the vast regions of the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms posed fundamental questions for the Bolshevik project, since they revealed the nature and extent of working class and peasant attachments to antisemitic and racialised forms of consciousness. This dissertation has two broad aims: first, it sets out to offer the most comprehensive analysis to date of the explosive articulation between antisemitism and the revolutionary process. It reveals, for example, the extent to which class struggle and anti-bourgeois discourse could overlap with antisemitic representations of Jewishness, often with devastating consequences. Second, it offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of the Soviet government attempt to arrest this articulation between antisemitism and revolutionary politics. Contrary to existing understandings, the dissertation argues that the ‘Bolshevik’ campaign against antisemitism was led not the Party leadership, as is often assumed, but by a small grouping of non-Bolshevik Jewish socialists who worked in the Party and Soviet government throughout 1918 and 1919. Having brought into focus an almost entirely overlooked moment in the history of Jewish experiences of, and responses to, antisemitism, the dissertation concludes by reflecting on how this reframing of the Russian Revolution might offer insights for anti-racists and socialists engaged in struggles for social justice today.

This thesis presents the first in-depth qualitative study of Russian complementary schools in Scotland. The fieldwork was conducted from November 2013 to April 2015 in four Russian schools in Scotland (in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee). The thesis offers novel insights and contributes to existing theoretical, methodological, and empirical research on migrant communities through a novel lens of heritage language complementary schools. It brings a new focus to existing work in this area through its consideration of language preservation as the key factor supporting this group of Russian-speaking parents to be involved in different types of social networks and socio-cultural transnational activities. Heritage language preservation is a negotiable process which flexibly responds to the interests of the parents, teachers and pupils who participate in the activities of the Russian schools and contribute to shaping their aims. These interests can be considered as the main driving forces for a wide range of aspects of the Russian schools' everyday life such as educational programmes, styles of teaching, the social relationship between members and additional cultural events organised by these schools. Russian-speaking communities bring together individuals with a range of characteristics (including different paths to migration, skills and educational levels, national identities, plans for settlement in the UK/Scotland). The present study has shown the importance of this diverse composition of Russian-speaking communities to the everyday operations of the Russian schools. By using the Russian schools as a context, the thesis brings a new angle to understanding how social networks emerge and develop in this particular migrant group, which has previously been characterised as lacking strong social bonding and bridging connections (Kopnina, 2007; Molnar, 2011). In addition, the findings contribute to the discussion of socio-cultural transnational activities provided by complementary schools (Willis, 1992) and their role in migrant community development (Moskal & Sime, 2015). Expanding on the existing literature in this area, the thesis investigates heritage Russian language learning as a two-way process influencing both the transnational activities emerging around the Russian schools, and the Russian-speaking community in Scotland itself.

The thesis discusses how patriotic education is openly promoted by the government in contemporary Russia through a series of programmes, entitled the ‘State Programme for the Patriotic Education of the Citizens of the Russian Federation’, promoted since 2001. However, this thesis presents the argument that patriotic education cannot fully be understood through examination of these formally organised initiatives. Instead, the thesis contributes towards a rethinking of patriotic education as a communicative process whereby multiple ideas of the nation are delivered to young people, both in formal and informal settings. The thesis argues that this promotion of patriotic education is connected to long-standing debates on nations and nationalism in Russia, but also places these within the more general discourse on nations and nationalism, in particular Anderson’s (2006) definition of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. The thesis is positioned within, and contributes to, more recent arguments surrounding the need to examine everyday ideas of the nation, but maintains a sense of the role played by elites in producing ideas of the nation by intercepting state-produced ideas represented within the education system. Importantly, the three-stage research design maps not only the delivery of these state ideas, but also accesses how these ideas are received and articulated by young people themselves, thus contributing to an understanding of cultural production. This is achieved through triangulation of three qualitative methods: analysis of textbooks, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews with teachers and students, conducted in St Petersburg. The data generated demonstrates that young people articulate both a sense of local and national belonging, cultivated just as much through their surroundings (historic buildings etc.) as through formal education. The thesis contributes to studies of (Russian) youth by demonstrating that young people negotiate with formal and informal ideas of belonging as they formulate their own understandings and expressions of belonging.

Purpose The aim of the paper is to improve the understanding of effects caused by involvement of brand community members in communication with a brand owning company. The research has been conducted in Moscow, Russia. It examines brand values associated with Audi by Audi Club Moscow members, and those ones perceived by non-community members, and beside this, the degree of involvement in communication with the company of both. Research Method Numerous in-depth interviews have been processed among brand community members, people outside the community and the Audi AG employees. Results Through the analysis of primary data it was found that thanks to active communication with Audi brand community members associate with the brand values, similar to the brand holder’s ones. However, people outside the community, who do not actively communicate with the company, have the tendency to perceive brand values, controversial to brand owner’s ones. Research limitations/implications Due to the time and resources limits only one Audi brand community was chosen to represent Russia’s market. The investigation of communication channels between a brand and brand communities could be the direction of further studies. Practical implications The results of the study might have value for practical implementation in business; they could be used for building up and managing communication between a company and brand communities. Originality/value This study supplies the contribution to the existing literature and companies’ managers disclosing a field not analyzed before

This thesis analyses the function of the provincial town in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and George Eliot (1819-1880). It demonstrates that the small town, far from being a neutral backdrop to their narratives, functions as a sociological space in which to appropriate or challenge the discourses of modernity with which Dostoevsky and Eliot were explicitly preoccupied. The first chapter examines how their provincial communities negotiate biblical narrative in a world in which, thanks to nineteenth-century attempts to historicise the Bible, an acceptance of the Bible's authoritative status is no longer a given. The instability of language itself is then interrogated in my second chapter, which shows that the transition from denotative, referential meaning to connotative, abstract forms causes ethical and narrative tension within the world of the novel, and which explores the aesthetics and ethics of gossip in the provincial town and novel. The third chapter details what becomes of the nineteenth-century discourse of heroism when characters seek to enact it in a provincial setting, showing that the environment of the provincial town proves hostile to heroic ambition, whilst the fourth argues that the provincial application of professional discourse (particularly that of medicine and the law) is critiqued and perfected by these authors. Through the analysis of this discourse, it is shown that Eliot and Dostoevsky's treatment of provincialism is ambivalent. As urban intellectuals who did not consent to inhabit the provincial milieu they depict, they in many respects censure the world they describe. However, this censure is not absolute, and through their chosen setting, as well as their chosen genre of the novel, they provide ethical instruction for their readers, then and now. Ethics, for them, are best tested in community, and explored in narrative.

La thèse vise à étudier et analyser les principaux éléments et facteurs qui exercent une influence sur les processus géopolitiques dans la diaspora russe. Le développement de cet organisme, aujourd'hui bipolaire, est déterminé par les acteurs aux échelles locales et globales, ainsi que par leur ensemble d'outils d'influence. En fait, les grands acteurs géopolitiques possèdent des intérêts importants dans les communautés russes, surtout dans le contexte géopolitique de la nouvelle guerre froide. Les communautés russes sont influencées par tous ces facteurs qui constituent sa structure bicéphale. Force est de constater que la collaboration intradiasporique paraît d’autant plus complexe que les deux parties ainsi que les puissances étatiques derrière elles entretiennent des conceptions et génèrent les représentations concernant la forme d'existence future de cette communauté. La gestion des flux migratoires importants, notamment vers l’Europe et les États-Unis attire l'attention des acteurs géopolitiques qui investissent massivement dans le développement du soft power. Mais cette intention géopolitique en même temps provoque la division de la diaspora еn plusieurs camps, doté chacun d'une sensibilité politique propre, donnant lieu à unе structurе très cоmplеxе еt hétérоclite dеs cоmmunаutés russеs. Notons qu'entre 1991 (le début de la dernière vague d'immigration russe) et 2019, à la suite de l'intensification de l'influence du soft power, a eu lieu la division entre les parties, l'apparition de nouveaux acteurs et les changements dans la structure de la diaspora. La thèse vise à étudier le mécanisme de segmentation, voire de division d’une communauté en des entités différentes, souvent antagoniques les unes aux autres, provoqué par le soft power. L'étude géopolitique de ce groupe permettra de découvrir son influence sur la géopolitique interne et externe au sein des villes qui ont une grande importance économique et politique pour la France et les États-Unis
The aim of this thesis is to study and analyze the main elements and factors that influence the geopolitical processes in the Russian diaspora. The development of this bipolar organism today is determined by local and global actors, as well as by their set of influence tools. In fact, major geopolitical players have important interests in Russian communities, especially in the geopolitical context of the new cold war. Russian communities are influenced by all these factors that constitute its bicepheral structure. It must be noted that intradiasporic collaboration appear all the more complex since both parties and the State powers behind them maintain conceptions and generate representations concerning the future form of existence of this community. The management of important migratory flows, particularly to Europe and the United States, attracts the attention of geopolitical actors who invest heavily in the development of soft power. But this geopolitical intention at the same time causes the division of the diaspora into several camps, each with its own political sensitivity, giving rise to a very cоmplеxе and heterogeneous structure of the Russian communities. It should be mentioned that between 1991 (the beginning of the last wave of Russian immigration) and 2019, following the intensification of the influence of soft power, took place the division between the two parties, the emergence of new actors and structural changes in the diaspora. This thesis studies the mechanism of segmentation or even division of a community into different entities, often antagonistic to each other, caused by soft power. The geopolitical study of this group will reveal its influence on internal and external geopolitics within cities that have great economic and political importance for France and the United States

La relation entre le savant et le politique constitue une problématique classique en sociologie. La présente étude y contribue, en examinant la question de l’expertise du fait religieux dans la Russie contemporaine. Relativement peu étudiée, la construction du savoir sur le religieux participe à la création des croyances politiques. En Russie contemporaine, ce processus est marqué par les contraintes imposées aux experts par la présence de l’Église orthodoxe russe dans l’espace public dont le rôle est prédominant, et par la lutte contre le terrorisme associée aux acteurs religieux, essentiellement musulmans. L’autonomie de l’expert devient alors problématique et doit faire l’objet d’une réflexion. À travers une étude des archives de la période soviétique et une enquête sociologique majoritairement qualitative, nous avons exploré les milieux des experts du religieux, le contenu de leurs productions et l’application de leurs expertises dans des situations variées, comme leur utilisation au sein d’un tribunal, leur diffusion par les médias ou leur exploitation par des commissions d’État sur les affaires religieuses. L’enquête montre que le pouvoir russe, malgré le contrôle souverain qu’il souhaite exercer sur les intellectuels et la production des savoirs, a besoin de légitimer ses décisions concernant le domaine religieux par le savoir académique
The relationship between science and politics is a classic problem in sociology. The present study contributes to this field by examining the question of expertise on religion in contemporary Russia. Relatively understudied, the construction of knowledge about the religious participates in the creation of political beliefs. In contemporary Russia, this process is characterized by the constraints imposed on experts by the predominant role of the Russian Orthodox Church, and by the fight against terrorism undertaken by public authorities against religious actors, mainly Muslims. The autonomy of the expert thus becomes problematic and calls for critical reflection. Through a study of the archives of the Soviet period and through a mainly qualitative sociological research approach, we explore the circles of religious experts, the contents of their knowledge productions, and the application of their expertise in various situations, such as their use for a trial, their dissemination by the media, or their exploitation by state commissions on religious affairs. This research demonstrates that, despite the control which the Russian state wishes to exert over intellectuals and the production of knowledge, the Russian state still needs to legitimize its decisions concerning the religious field through the use of academic knowledge

Kyoto University (京都大学)
0048
新制・課程博士
博士(人間・環境学)
甲第16475号
人博第573号
新制||人||137(附属図書館)
23||人博||573(吉田南総合図書館)
29117
京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生文明学専攻
(主査)教授 ブライアン ハヤシ マサル, 教授 前川 玲子, 教授 服部 文昭, 准教授 小倉 紀蔵
学位規則第４条第１項該当

This thesis attempts to account for post-Soviet Russian national identity and nationalism ‘from below’, employing the ‘thick descriptions’ of the nation reproduced by ordinary Russians across social and generational lines. It examines the current equilibrium in mainstream nationalist hegemonic discourse, shedding light on the vitality of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. In doing this, nationalism is viewed as a set of discursive formations that make claims about how or what the nation is or should be. A central aim in this research is to highlight what discursive constructions are shared or contested across a representative sample of the Russian population. In order to offer a meaningful assessment of nationalist discourse, this research employs ethnographic fieldwork driven by a grounded theory approach. With fifteen months of fieldwork in three Russian cities, this permitted room for exploration and siginificant redirection of the research focus. This helped reveal the interconnections between certain common, foundational elements of national identity and the structure of a dominant nationalist discourse. Previous research has often focused on the challenges of Russian nation-building given the complicated heritage bestowed by the Romanov and Soviet empires. This thesis identifies certain historical and cultural factors vital to the shaping of Russian national identity today. It also identifies a current hegemonic nationalist discourse and unpacks how it is relevant to the majority. This dominant discourse is built on certain myths and versions of normality, much of which takes the late Soviet as ‘normal’ and the wild nineties as ‘abnormal’. The thesis also explores how the above is contested. What is argued is that, at the current moment, the challenge of anti-hegemonic nationalist discourses is, for many people, neutralised by the appeal of a particular geopolitical vision. This research outlines how visions of the nation are weaved into commonly shared notions of identity and underlines how the current status quo is held together.

This thesis uses an area studies approach to examine the complex relationship between citizenship, disability and welfare provision. It does so through a bottom-up analysis of how the state welfare system affects the everyday lives of physically disabled adults in contemporary Russia. Drawing on thirteen months of qualitative fieldwork in the city of Kazan, I study how tensions between guaranteeing rights and providing care are balanced in social provision. My focus on physical disability offers a sharp insight into the socially constructed tropes of control and exclusion that can mediate experiences of citizenship and also seeks to rectify the lack of research on disabled people in non-Western contexts, especially the postsocialist region. My research is underpinned by a theoretical and methodological framework that sees ‘social citizenship’ as an explicitly relational, emotional and embodied phenomenon and therefore values lived experiences of welfare provision. Each of my four empirical chapters considers a particular dimension of citizenship: needs interpretation, livelihoods, mobility and personal agency. Together they highlight that welfare provision is not always empowering and can create powerful inequalities. At the same time, I show that citizenship is often reworked from below through actions and discourses that challenge official ideas about the capacities and needs of disabled people.

The acquisition and maintenance of human capital are considered key drivers of productivity and economic growth. However, recent literature shows that in the case of Russia, this relationship is not obvious, which raises a question concerning the nature of human capital accumulation, despite the significant expansion of tertiary education in this country. The existing literature, much of it relying on a theory of market imperfections, tends to explain low incidences of training by the lack of employer incentives to invest in the human capital of their employees. This dissertation adds to this view confirming the negative role of ‘bad’ jobs and social origins in obstructing employees from skills development in BRIC-like countries. Skills training in Russia is constrained by stratifying occupational forces comprising jobs with low requirements to skills development, which conserves the working population in generic labour. This reveals the phenomenon of skills polarisation ‘at the bottom’ in a late-industrial country, thus, contributing to the growing critique of the knowledge society theory. For those few workers who occupy ‘good’ jobs, skills training is strongly linked to personal-specific traits, such as qualifications and computer and language skills; and this is common in both Russia and India. However, in contrast to Russia, India is still forming their knowledge society. This is confirmed by the statistically significant impact of socio-demographic origins (e.g. age, household size, marital status, and religion) on the incidence of training, which reveals a crucial role of ascription in human capital acquisition in contemporary India. The present thesis contributes to the growing literature on structural prerequisites for successful advancement and the contradictory development of the BRIC countries.

[Truncated abstract] Molokans are a Russian sectarian community that has been a transnational diasporic community since their exile from southern Russia in 1839. During the 1839 exodus they were relocated to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. These countries make up a region referred to by Molokans as Transcaucasia located in and around the Caucasus Mountains. A further migration to Turkmenistan followed in 1889. Since that time, Molokans have settled in Iran, the United States of America, Mexico, Australia and Brazil. The colonies in Brazil and Mexico have disbanded with members re-joining Molokan communities in the United States of America and Australia. The communities remain in contact with one another and with various Molokan communities still existing in the Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic. Molokans are characterised by a religious structure of lay ministers and elders in a traditional, patriarchal social community. They are a collectivity of churches (there is no hierarchy between the churches) and sub-groups who practise varying degrees of adherence to Molokan dogma. They are a millenarian, charismatic religious community similar to Pentecostals and Anabaptists with the exception that they have ceased to evangelise and have become ‘closed’ communities practising endogamy. Given their closed structure, relatively little is known about this group in mainstream society . . . Spirituality, in the form of prophecy, healing, and the shared expression of religious ecstasy (rejoicing in the Holy Spirit) provides a sense of communitas that helps to bind the communities. Persecution in Russia and in the United States of America promoted mistrust of outsiders and contributed to the closure of social boundaries. Interventionist and reform activities in both Russia and the United States of America reinforced the belief that social closure was the only way to maintain cultural continuity. Their shared history of migration and persecution contributes to the building of a core community identity.

This thesis provides an analysis of the national integration strategy developed in the Czech Republic to address the social exclusion of Romani communities. Based on a careful study of policy documents and interviews with the key actors involved in implementing the integration policy in České Budĕjovice and Ostrava, this thesis identifies the main barriers which exclude Roma from the education system and the labour market and describes how national policy in the spheres of education and employment is being implemented at the local level. By discussing the integration strategy with the people responsible for its implementation, it was possible to look at the policy from a new perspective. These people are experts in dealing with the realities of social exclusion in Romani communities and are in the best position to assess the effectiveness of the different programmes which together make up the integration policy. This study reveals that Romani communities continue to suffer from discrimination and that local authorities play a vital role in ensuring that the policies designed by central government become a reality. Communication between policy makers and those responsible for implementation is crucial to ensure that the programmes that form the core of the integration strategy are implemented fully. Some programmes have been more effective in certain places because local political and economic circumstances have a great deal of influence over the likely success of the policy. Anti-Romani prejudices in wider society and the apathy of Roma who are not interested in the programmes designed to help, remain significant obstacles, but creating an inclusive society and addressing the mistrust which has developed over generations takes time and persistence. Therefore, for the integration policy to succeed, all the key agencies, policy makers and practitioners working with Romani communities must cooperate and share the same agenda.

The thesis employs the political process approach within social movement theory (SMT) to examine in a comparative fashion two distinctly different opposition movements in southern Russia. One is the environmental movement in Krasnodar Krai and the other is the ethno-national Balkar movement in Kabardino-Balkaria. The political process approach focuses on the role and interaction of political opportunities, mobilising structures, and social movement framing for both movements, and seeks to explore their role in social movement mobilisation dynamics in Russia’s non-democratic context. The combination of the analysis of the three variables of political opportunities, mobilising structures, and social movement framing allows for fresh perspectives on both SMT and post-Soviet area studies. The thesis is particularly concerned with networks. It argues that in non-democratic contexts, the role of networks is more important than in democratic contexts.

This thesis explores the nexus between identity construction and the outbreak of violence. It focuses on the cases of violence in Georgia in the early 1990s, in particular – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The author takes an historical, process-based approach to the question of how violence “came about” in Georgia. Using previously unpublished archival material and extensive, in-depth interviews, the author traces the process of the development of inter-ethnic relations in Georgia over the course of several decades and provides a detailed examination of how these relations evolved from tensions to violence. As the thesis demonstrates, ethnic fears and hostility between Georgians on the one hand and Abkhaz and Ossetians on the other – one of the important contributing factors to the outbreak of violence – were neither deep-rooted nor long-standing; rather, they were socially constructed. Still, despite its socially constructed nature, the author argues for bringing ethnicity back in the debate and proposes a more flexible, multi-layered analytical framework in order to integrate constructivist and primordialist views on ethnicity and ethnic group formation in the study of ethnic conflicts and violence. The result is a shift of analysis from self-centered manipulative elites to more “boundedly rational” actors who operate within a socially constructed reality shaped by Soviet nationality policies and historical and cultural narratives (embedded in myths and metaphors of ethnic groups concerned).

Russian entrepreneurs have long faced considerable difficulties. While much is known about what these difficulties are, less is known about how entrepreneurs respond to them, what it is like to be an entrepreneur under these circumstances and why they bother in the first place. In this thesis I address these questions by conducting a multi-sited ethnography within three small Siberian enterprises, observing the directors as they conduct their everyday business. I find that these entrepreneurs all resent their vulnerable position in the political economy but that they have developed a capacity to survive or thrive in spite of the obstacles and threats they encounter. This capacity, I argue, is less a consequence of their commercial acumen than their understanding of what can be achieved given their particular circumstances, their knowledge that business-state relations take an informal, personalised form, and their preparedness to resist predatory outsiders. This leads me to reconsider the meaning of entrepreneurship in the Russian context. Furthermore, my informants’ agency presents a challenge to the idea in predominant political economic theories that the Russian state dominates the private sector. I therefore reconceptualise business-state relations using Douglass C. North et al’s Limited Access Order theory in combination with my empirical materials. This provides a more accurate theory that accepts the pre-eminent role of the state in the political economy while accommodating the agency displayed by my informants.

L’écologie microbienne concerne l’étude des microorganismes et de leurs interactions biotiques et abiotiques dans un écosystème donné. Ces vingt dernières années, l’avancement des techniques moléculaires pour analyser la diversité microbienne et, notamment, les nouvelles technologies de séquençages (NGS) ont permis de surmonter les limitations associées aux approches traditionnelles basées sur la culture et la microscopie. Ces approches moléculaires ont conduit à une accumulation des données de diversité microbienne et de potentiel métabolique dans des communautés microbiennes des écosystèmes variés.Cependant, ces efforts ont été principalement appliqués sur des environnements facilement accessibles ou liés à l’humain, comme le plancton (marin principalement) et la flore intestinale. Néanmoins, ceci a conduit à une très forte augmentation de données environnementales et au développement de la bioinformatique par le biais de nombreux outils. Parmi les environnements délaissés des études, les environnements faibles en oxygène sont probablement également porteurs de nouveautés phylogénique ou métaboliques.Afin de palier à cela, nous avons choisi d’explorer deux environnements suboxiques relativement peu étudiés : la cave Movile (Roumanie) et les sédiments du lac Baikal (Sibérie, Russie). Notre but étant de montrer les diversités phylogénétiques et fonctionnelles des microbes de ces biotopes.Pour cela, j’ai d'abord développé un pipeline d’analyse de données métabarcoding (petite sous-unités ribosomique). Ensuite, j’ai appliqué cet outil sur des données de métabarcoding de protistes provenant d’échantillons d’eau et de tapis microbiens de la cave de Movile, un écosystème chemosynthétique pratiquement fermé. Nous avons montré que la diversité des protistes de la cave s’étendait à quasiment tous les grands groupes eucaryotes et provenait à la fois d’origine d’eaux douces et marines. De plus, la plupart ont été affiliées à des groupes d’organismes typiquement anaérobies, ce qui est concordant avec les paramètres abiotiques de la cave. Écologiquement, ces protistes sont des prédateurs mais aussi vraisemblablement des partenaires symbiotiques avec des espèces procaryotes de la cave.Dans une deuxième étude, j’ai eu l’opportunité d’appliquer ce pipeline de métabarcoding sur des données procaryotes et eucaryotes provenant des couches superficielles des sédiments du lac d’eau douce Baikal. Comme attendu, les communautés microbiennes dans ces sédiments sont particulièrement diverses et relativement enrichis en archées. Nous avons aussi pu mettre en évidence des lignées que l’on pensait exclusivement marines dans ces sédiments. Ces lignées sont probablement planctoniques mais s’accumulent au fond par sédimentation. Enfin, les échantillons ont été prélevés dans le but de tester les influences de la profondeur, du bassin et de la latitude sur les communautés. Aucune d’elles ne s’est révélée significative.Dans une troisième étude, j'ai utilisé une approche métagénomique afin de révéler les acteurs écologiquement majeurs dans les sédiments, leurs rôles et de reconstruire leurs génomes. Cela nous a permis notamment de mettre en évidence le rôle primordial des Thaumarchaeota dans le cycle de l’azote et la production primaire de molécules de carbone. Les chloroflexi et les protéobacteries ont aussi un rôle important dans la surface des sédiments du lac Baikal. Ce travail de thèse participe à la connaissance globale de la diversité microbienne sur la planète en mettant en lumière des environnements peu étudiés. De plus, l’étude de la surface des sédiments du lac Baikal apporte de nouvelles données sur le sujet de la transition eau douces/eau marines des microbes. Enfin, la métagénomique a permis de révéler le cycle des nutriments et les microorganismes y participant dans ces échantillons de sédiment. En résumé, ce travail vient mettre en lumière l’écologie microbienne d’écosystèmes suboxiques, notamment la surface des sédiments du lac Baikal
Microbial ecology is the science of micro-organisms and their biotic and abiotic interactions in a given ecosystem. As technology has advanced, molecular techniques have been widely used to overcome the limitations of classical approaches such as culturing and microscopy. Indeed, the development of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies in the past twenty years has largely helped to unravel the phylogenetic diversity and functional potential of microbial communities across ecosystems.Nonetheless, most of the environments studied through these techniques concentrated on relatively easily accessible, tractable and host-related ecosystems such as plankton (especially in marine ecosystems), soils and gut microbiomes. This has contributed to the rapid accumulation of a wealth of environmental diversity and metagenomic data along with advances in bioinformatics leading to the development of myriads of tools. Oxygen-depleted environments and especially their microbial eukaryote components are less studied and may lead to future phylogenetic and metabolic discoveries.In order to address this, we conducted analyses on two poorly studied suboxic ecosystems: Movile Cave (Romania) and lake Baikal sediments (Siberia, Russia). In this task, we aimed at unveiling the taxonomic and functional diversity of microorganims in these environments.To do so, I first evaluated the available bioinformatics tools and implemented a bioinformatics pipeline for 16S/18S rRNA gene-based metabarcoding analysis, making reasoned methodological choices. Then, as a case study, I carried out metabarcoding analyses of the water and floating microbial mats found in Movile Cave in order to investigate its protist diversity. Our study showed that Movile Cave, a sealed off chemosynthetic ecosystem, harbored a substantial protist diversity with species spanning most of the major eukaryotic super groups. The majority if these protists were related to species of freshwater and marine origins. Most of them were putatively anaerobic, in line with the cave environment, and suggesting that in addition to their predatory role, they might participate in prokaryote-protist symbioses.In a second study, I applied my metabarcoding pipeline to explore unique and relatively unexplored environment of Lake Baikal sediments. I first applied a metabarcoding approach using 16S and 18S rRNA genes to describe prokaryotic as well as protist diversity. Overall, the communities within these ecosystems were very diverse and enriched in ammonia-oxidizing Thaumarchaeota. We also identified several typical marine taxa which are likely planktonic but accumulate in sediments. Finally, our sampling plan allowed us to test whether differences across depth, basin or latitude affected microbial community structure. Our results showed that the composition of sediment microbial communities remained relatively stable across the samples regardless of depth or latitude.In a third study, we applied metagenomics to study the metabolic potential of communities associated to Baikal sediments and to reconstruct metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) of dominant organisms. This revealed the considerable ecological importance of Thaumarchaeota lineages in lake Baikal sediments, which were found to be the major autotrophic phyla and also very implicated in the nitrogen cycle. Chloroflexi and Proteobacteria-related species also appeared ecologically important.This PhD thesis reveals the taxonomic diversity of poorly studied suboxic ecosystems and therefore contributes to our knowledge of microbial diversity on Earth. Additionally, the analyses of surface sediment samples in lake Baikal adds new light on freshwater-marine transitions. The metagenomic analyses reported here allowed us to postulate a model of nutrient cycle carried out by microorganismsin these sediments. Overall, this work sheds light on the microbial ecology of oxygen-depleted environments, and most notably lake Baikal surface sediments

International lawyers are familiar with the question: “Is international law law?” But this thesis instead asks the question: “Is international law international?” Using a variety of methods, this work sheds light on some of the ways in which international law as a transnational legal field is constructed by international law academics, and is conceptualized in international law textbooks, in the five permanent members of the Security Council: the People’s Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America. It explores how different national communities of international lawyers construct and pass on their understandings of “international law” in ways that belie the field’s claim to universality, perpetuating certain forms of difference and dominance. By adopting a comparative approach, it aims to make international lawyers more aware of the frames that shape their own understandings of and approaches to the field, as well as how these might be similar to or different from the frames adopted by those coming from other states, regions or geopolitical groupings. It also examines how some of these patterns might be disrupted as a result of shifts in geopolitical power, such as the movement from unipolar power toward greater multipolarity and the growing confrontations between Western liberal democratic states (like the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) and non-Western authoritarian states (like China and Russia).

How do security communities develop in and through practice? For more than forty years, security relations between Russia and NATO member states were structured by the spectre of mutual assured destruction as symbolized by thousands of nuclear missiles targeted at each other. Less than a generation after the end of the Cold War, the possibility of military confrontation between these former enemies has considerably receded. Taking inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu, this dissertation develops a theory of practice of security communities that argues that on the ground of international politics, the social fact of peace emerges when security practitioners come to debate with diplomacy—the non-violent settlement of disputes—instead of about diplomacy. It is doxa, a relationship of immediate adherence to the order of things, that makes such a peaceful practical sense possible. In the empirical analysis, the dissertation reveals an intriguing paradox in the post-Cold War Russian-Atlantic relationship. On the one hand, over the last fifteen years Russia and NATO member states have solved each and every one of their disputes, including fierce ones over the double enlargement, by nonviolent means. Such a track record of peaceful change is testimony to security-communitybuilding processes. But on the other hand, diplomatic success was often bought at the price of a growing mistrust on the Russian side. As the Russian Great Power habitus resurfaced, hysteresis—a disconnect between players’ dispositions and their positions in the game—steadily increased to the point of inconclusive symbolic power struggles over the rules of the international security game and the roles that each player should play. A decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, Russian-Atlantic relations have left the terrain of military confrontation but have yet to settle on that of mature peace. Building on several dozen interviews with Russian and NATO security practitioners, the dissertation discovers that diplomacy has become a normal though not a self-evident practice in Russian-Atlantic dealings.

The dissertation is devoted to the analysis of a wide range of phenomena related to Russian Buddhism and the Internet. Religion in the Internet becomes a popular direction of the humanities researches, however, the case studies of Christianity and Islam strongly prevail over Buddhist ones, not to mention the exploration of the Buddhism in the Russian Internet. That is why from the very beginning my research was performed in explorative manner. In general, the dissertation represents the analysis of both: Internet in Buddhism, and Buddhism in the Internet. In other words, I focused on studying the activities of both: the official Russian Buddhist organizations, as well as laymen and their vigorous activity in the Internet. From such perspective the identity issues of Russian Buddhists and the influence of their peculiarities on what is happening in the Russian-language virtual space come to the forefront. Such approach predetermined two major research questions: (1) who are the Buddhist users of the Russian Internet? (2) how do they use initially neutral Internet technologies and why? The dissertation consists of five chapters. The first two chapters are devoted to the first research question. Taking into consideration the fact that almost all schools and traditions of Buddhism, such as Mahayana and Theravada; Tibetan, Southern and Far Eastern Buddhism, are presented in the Russian language Internet, Chapter I is devoted to the description of Buddhist traditions offline. I demonstrate that various schools of Buddhism today have significant differences in the fundamental questions: “who is Buddha?”, “where does the path of Buddhist practice lead to?”, etc.; and rather look like different religions. Chapter II represents an overview of Buddhism in Russia with more than four centuries of history during which the waves of Buddhism expansion shaped its contemporary state. Today in Russia there are a lot of Buddhist organizations, as well as subcultures connected to Buddhism, which exist in different forms, but mostly do not interact with each other. These communities constitute the variety of Buddhist discourses which can influence the contemporary Buddhist. I propose to differentiate three major discourses of Russian Buddhism: traditional Buddhism, Buddhist modernism, and new religious movements. Traditional Buddhism was shaping in Russian regions of ethnic Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva for several centuries, and established Buddhist environment in which laypeople predominantly comprehended Buddhism through traditions, rituals, and numerous sacral objects, as well as by honoring lamas and receiving practical advice from them. The more profound practices in this model are the prerogative of the clergy. The Buddhist modernism in many aspects arose from Russian Buddhology and was finally formed during expansion of various world Buddhist communities to the West, including Russia. In global Buddhist communities the emphasis is made on the adaptation of Buddhist theory and monastic practices for laymen. In such a way, this model focuses on Buddhist theory and practice of meditation, and implies distribution of specialized literature and tours of Buddhist teachers with lectures throughout the world. The new religious movements of Buddhism represent a certain form of religious syncretism of various religions of the East, including Buddhism, often orientalized. These movements establish various subcultures whose members consider themselves as Buddhists. Such diversity of Buddhist discourses is a consequence of democratic character inherent to Buddhism, which from the very beginning excluded pressure from authorities. Therefore, in the contemporary Russia it is rather difficult to speak about a single leader, or dominant Buddhist organization. Answering the first question we can conclude that the Buddhist users of the Russian Internet are heterogeneous Buddhist organizations, often unrelated to each other, guided by different religious principles depending on the Buddhist tradition they belong to. As for Buddhists and their identities, it becomes clear that every user who identifies himself as a Buddhist can have completely different ideas about Buddhist doctrine and the forms in which it should be practiced. That is why I come to the conclusion that, while studying Buddhism and Buddhists in Russia, it is impossible to elaborate a rigid classification and that is why each case and representative in the Internet should be considered contextually. The next three chapters are devoted to the second research question: how do the Buddhist users use initially neutral Internet technologies and why? Chapter III represents an overview of Internet technologies as a qualitatively new space for Russian Buddhism. I followed the popular division of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. This division made it possible to focus on the logic of the Internet technologies development, which lied in simplification of usage and increase of the number of users for creation, consumption and dissemination of information. Studying the activities of the official Buddhist organizations of Russia in the Internet in Chapter IV, I come to the conclusion that the Internet activity is often predetermined by the need for expansion, or by the problems arisen as a result of the expansion. The Internet facilities to some extent can solve these problems by capturing vivid domains, or self-presentation in order to attract new users, as well as simulating real contact of Buddhist teachers with distant followers of global Buddhist networks. These types of Internet activities vary and depend on the religious characteristics of Buddhist traditions. I come to the conclusion that peculiarities of Mahayana in many aspects block transferring of Buddhist practices in the Internet. Therefore, Mahayana Buddhist organizations either try to overcome these obstacles or limit their actions in the virtual space. Features of Theravada, such as absence of sacred transmissions and greater emphasis on texts, are advantageous for using the Internet. The analysis shows that most of the Buddhist organizations represented in the Internet belong to Buddhist modernism discourse. The lack of interest in the Internet from the traditional Buddhist communities of Russia can be explained by the lack of expansive aspirations, specific religious peculiarities and traditions of interaction. In such Buddhist landscape online an ordinary user while searching for religion in the Internet will more likely encounter “global” Buddhist communities, which occupy central position, rather than traditional Buddhist organizations, which lie on the periphery or are simply absent in the Internet. In chapter V, I present the results of long-term immersion into the Buddhist communities in the social network Vkontakte, where the majority of Buddhist Internet activities take place. The density and intensity of the information and users’ flows in the Buddhism community of Vkontakte justified its choice as the major field for analysis. In course of research, I was able to fix a lot of phenomena, which in general are the result of interrelations of various types of Buddhists and can be described as conflicts and dialogues of the Buddhist communities of Russia in the Internet. It was decided to divide the identified cases into four subsections, where each subsection is designed to describe a specific area of interrelations. The first subsection “Buddhist ideas vs New Age” shows the emergence of conflict interactions due to the different views on Buddhist ideas, when the content hardly connected to Buddhism leads to the struggle for “trueness” and creation of an “expert” community, which “cleans” the image of Buddhism in the Internet. Subsection “Theravada vs Mahayana” presents cases when the “purification” processes turn into the struggle for trueness already within the stable community of Buddhists, and specifically between representatives of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. The next subsection “online vs offline” describes conflicts between “ideal” online Buddhism and traditional offline Buddhism. Using these subsections, I show that immersion in the environment of the Internet of Buddhism creates a hyper-reality experience that impacts on religious identity and can lead to changing of opinion, including belonging to a particular Buddhist tradition. The case studies of conflicts are followed by the cases of online cooperation in the form of electronic petitions, where I introduce the attempts of different Buddhist communities to unite against the emerging problems of the Buddhist world. I present two cases emphasizing the complex interrelationships of the Buddhist communities of Russia, which, depending on the ideological component, can lead to either consolidation, or rupture, and affect the potential for joint activities of the Buddhist Internet communities. The cases considered in this dissertation show that the overwhelming majority of the phenomena occurring in the Internet emerge first of all due to the diversity of Buddhism and Buddhists in Russia. The chaotic exploration of the virtual space has formed the above-described Buddhist Internet environment. The lack of interest in the Internet from official Buddhist communities suggests that the current state of affairs is unlikely to change significantly. Nevertheless, the study of the development of Buddhism in the Russian-speaking Internet is of further academic interest, taking into consideration the fact that everyday Internet use throughout the world will continue to grow, and in these conditions the influence of Buddhist Internet communities on Russia’s religious space will also continue to grow and strengthen.
Rozprawa poświęcona jest analizie szerokiego zakresu zjawisk związanych z rosyjskim buddyzmem i Internetem. Religia w Internecie staje się popularnym kierunkiem badań humanistycznych, jednak studia przypadków chrześcijaństwa i islamu zdecydowanie dominują nad naukami buddyjskimi, nie wspominając o eksploracji buddyzmu w rosyjskim Internecie. Dlatego od samego początku moje badania były prowadzone w sposób eksploracyjny. Ogólnie rzecz biorąc, praca stanowi analizę zarówno Internetu w buddyzmie, jak i buddyzmu w Internecie. Innymi słowy, skupiłem się na badaniu działalności zarówno oficjalnych rosyjskich organizacji buddyjskich, jak i świeckich oraz ich energicznej aktywności w Internecie. Z takiej perspektywy na pierwszy plan wysuwają się kwestie tożsamości rosyjskich buddystów i wpływ ich osobliwości na to, co dzieje się w rosyjskojęzycznej przestrzeni wirtualnej. Takie podejście określiło dwa główne pytania badawcze: (1) kim są buddyjscy użytkownicy rosyjskiego Internetu? (2) w jaki sposób wykorzystują początkowo neutralne technologie internetowe i dlaczego? Rozprawa składa się z pięciu rozdziałów. Pierwsze dwa rozdziały poświęcone są pierwszemu pytaniu badawczemu. Biorąc pod uwagę fakt, że prawie wszystkie szkoły i tradycje buddyzmu, takie jak Mahayana i Theravada; Buddyzm tybetański, południowy i dalekowschodni prezentowany jest w rosyjskim języku internetowym, rozdział I poświęcony jest opisowi buddyjskich tradycji offline. Wykazuję, że różne szkoły buddyzmu mają dziś znaczące różnice w podstawowych pytaniach: „kto jest Buddą?”, „Dokąd prowadzi ścieżka praktyki buddyjskiej?” Itp .; i raczej wyglądają jak różne religie. Rozdział II przedstawia przegląd buddyzmu w Rosji z ponad czterema wiekami historii, podczas którego fale ekspansji buddyzmu ukształtowały jego współczesny stan. Obecnie w Rosji istnieje wiele organizacji buddyjskich, a także subkultur związanych z buddyzmem, które istnieją w różnych formach, ale w większości nie wchodzą ze sobą w interakcje. Wspólnoty te stanowią różnorodność buddyjskich dyskursów, które mogą wpływać na współczesnych buddystów. Proponuję rozróżnić trzy główne dyskursy rosyjskiego buddyzmu: tradycyjny buddyzm, buddyjski modernizm i nowe ruchy religijne. Tradycyjny buddyzm kształtował się w rosyjskich regionach etnicznych Buriacji, Kałmucji i Tuwy przez kilka stuleci, a ugruntowane środowisko buddyjskie, w którym świeccy przeważnie pojmowali buddyzm poprzez tradycje, rytuały i liczne obiekty sakralne, a także honorując lamów i otrzymując od nich praktyczne rady. Bardziej głębokie praktyki w tym modelu są prerogatywą duchowieństwa. Buddyjski modernizm pod wieloma względami wywodził się z rosyjskiej buddologii i ostatecznie powstał podczas ekspansji różnych światowych społeczności buddyjskich na Zachód, w tym Rosji. W globalnych społecznościach buddyjskich nacisk kładzie się na adaptację buddyjskiej teorii i praktyk monastycznych dla świeckich. W ten sposób model ten koncentruje się na buddyjskiej teorii i praktyce medytacji oraz zakłada dystrybucję specjalistycznej literatury i wycieczki buddyjskich nauczycieli z wykładami na całym świecie. Nowe ruchy religijne buddyzmu stanowią pewną formę synkretyzmu religijnego różnych religii Wschodu, w tym buddyzmu, często orientalizowanego. Ruchy te tworzą różne subkultury, których członkowie uważają się za buddystów. Taka różnorodność buddyjskich dyskursów jest konsekwencją demokratycznego charakteru buddyzmu, który od samego początku wykluczał nacisk ze strony władz. Dlatego we współczesnej Rosji trudno jest mówić o jednym przywódcy lub dominującej organizacji buddyjskiej. Odpowiadając na pierwsze pytanie, możemy stwierdzić, że buddyjscy użytkownicy rosyjskiego Internetu są heterogenicznymi organizacjami buddyjskimi, często niezwiązanymi ze sobą, kierującymi się różnymi zasadami religijnymi w zależności od tradycji buddyjskiej, do której należą. Jeśli chodzi o buddystów i ich tożsamości, staje się jasne, że każdy użytkownik, który identyfikuje się jako buddysta, może mieć zupełnie inne pomysły na temat doktryny buddyjskiej i formy, w jakich powinna być praktykowana. Dlatego dochodzę do wniosku, że studiując buddyzm i buddystów w Rosji, nie można opracować sztywnej klasyfikacji i dlatego każdy przypadek i każdego przedstawiciela w Internecie należy rozpatrywać kontekstowo. Następne trzy rozdziały poświęcone są drugiemu pytaniu badawczemu: w jaki sposób użytkownicy buddyjscy używają początkowo neutralnych technologii internetowych i dlaczego? Rozdział III przedstawia przegląd technologii internetowych jako jakościowo nowej przestrzeni dla rosyjskiego buddyzmu. Śledziłem popularny podział na Web 1.0 i Web 2.0. Podział ten umożliwił skupienie się na logice rozwoju technologii internetowych, która polegała na uproszczeniu użytkowania i zwiększeniu liczby użytkowników do tworzenia, konsumpcji i rozpowszechniania informacji. Badając działalność oficjalnych organizacji buddyjskich w Rosji w Internecie w rozdziale IV, dochodzę do wniosku, że aktywność w Internecie jest często z góry określana przez potrzebę ekspansji lub problemy powstałe w wyniku ekspansji. Urządzenia internetowe w pewnym stopniu mogą rozwiązać te problemy, przechwytując żywe domeny lub autoprezentację w celu przyciągnięcia nowych użytkowników, a także symulując rzeczywisty kontakt buddyjskich nauczycieli z odległymi zwolennikami globalnych sieci buddyjskich. Tego typu działania internetowe różnią się i zależą od cech religijnych tradycji buddyjskiej. Dochodzę do wniosku, że osobliwości Mahajany w wielu aspektach blokują przekazywanie praktyk buddyjskich w Internecie. Dlatego organizacje buddyjskie Mahajany albo próbują pokonać te przeszkody, albo ograniczyć swoje działania w przestrzeni wirtualnej. Cechy Therawady, takie jak brak świętych przekazów i większy nacisk na teksty, są korzystne dla korzystania z Internetu. Analiza pokazuje, że większość organizacji buddyjskich reprezentowanych w Internecie należy do buddyjskiego dyskursu modernizmu. Brak zainteresowania Internetem ze strony tradycyjnych społeczności buddyjskich w Rosji można wyjaśnić brakiem rozległych aspiracji, specyficznych osobliwości religijnych i tradycji interakcji. W takim buddyjskim krajobrazie zwykły użytkownik szukający religii w Internecie częściej spotyka „globalne” społeczności buddyjskie, które zajmują centralne miejsce, a nie tradycyjne organizacje buddyjskie, które leżą na peryferiach lub po prostu nie występują w Internecie. W rozdziale V przedstawiam wyniki długotrwałego zanurzenia się w społeczności buddyjskie w sieci społecznej Vkontakte, gdzie odbywa się większość buddyjskich działań internetowych. Gęstość i intensywność informacji i przepływów użytkowników w społeczności buddyzmu Vkontakte uzasadniały jego wybór jako główne pole do analizy. W trakcie badań udało mi się odnotować wiele zjawisk, które w ogólności są wynikiem wzajemnych powiązań różnych typów buddystów i można je opisać jako konflikty i dialogi społeczności buddyjskich w Rosji w Internecie. Postanowiono podzielić zidentyfikowane przypadki na cztery podsekcje, gdzie każda podsekcja ma na celu opisanie konkretnego obszaru wzajemnych powiązań. Pierwszy podrozdział „Buddyjskie idee a New Age” pokazuje pojawienie się interakcji konfliktowych ze względu na różne poglądy na idee buddyjskie, kiedy treści rzadko związane z buddyzmem prowadzą do walki o „prawdziwość” i stworzenie społeczności „ekspertów”, która „oczyszcza” obraz buddyzmu w Internecie. Podrozdział „Theravada vs Mahayana” przedstawia przypadki, w których procesy „oczyszczania” zamieniają się w walkę o prawdziwość już w stabilnej społeczności buddystów, a konkretnie pomiędzy przedstawicielami Buddyzmu Theravada i Mahayana. Następny podrozdział „online vs offline” opisuje konflikty między „idealnym” buddyzmem internetowym a tradycyjnym buddyzmem offline. Korzystając z tych podrozdziałów, pokazuję, że zanurzenie w środowisku Internetu buddyzmu tworzy doświadczenie hiper-rzeczywistości, które wpływa na tożsamość religijną i może prowadzić do zmiany opinii, w tym przynależności do określonej tradycji buddyjskiej. Po studiach przypadków konfliktów następują przypadki współpracy online w formie petycji elektronicznych, w których przedstawiam próby różnych społeczności buddyjskich, by zjednoczyć się przeciwko pojawiającym się problemom świata buddyjskiego. Przedstawiam dwie sprawy podkreślające złożone powiązania buddyjskich społeczności w Rosji, które w zależności od ideologicznego komponentu mogą prowadzić do konsolidacji lub zerwania i wpływać na potencjał wspólnych działań buddyjskich społeczności internetowych. Przypadki rozważane w tej rozprawie pokazują, że przytłaczająca większość zjawisk zachodzących w Internecie pojawia się przede wszystkim z powodu różnorodności buddyzmu i buddystów w Rosji. Chaotyczna eksploracja wirtualnej przestrzeni stworzyła opisane powyżej buddyjskie środowisko internetowe. Brak zainteresowania oficjalnymi społecznościami buddyjskimi w Internecie sugeruje, że obecny stan rzeczy raczej nie zmieni się znacząco. Niemniej jednak badania nad rozwojem buddyzmu w rosyjskojęzycznym internecie są przedmiotem dalszych zainteresowań akademickich, biorąc pod uwagę fakt, że codzienne korzystanie z Internetu na całym świecie będzie nadal rosło, a w tych warunkach wpływ buddyjskich społeczności internetowych na rosyjską przestrzeń religijna będzie się również rozwijać i umacniać.