Nº 3 (2024)

This article is an introduction to the issue’s special theme on “Humans Buying and Selling: Anthropology of Trade (People, Goods, Structures, Relationships)”, featuring contributions by Svetlana Sidneva, Alexander Novik, Armando Maxia, Oxana Fais-Leutskaia, Julia Butschatskaja, and Irina Kucherova. The authors discuss the current state of trade as economic activity in a number of European regions, examining the local specificities of trade operations and their functioning, the symbolism of goods, the preservation of archaic traditional elements of “old ways of trade”, the human relationships of participants in these “games of exchange”, and other aspects of trade as a cultural phenomenon. Due to the fact that trade, especially in the context of modern developed societies, is infrequently considered as an object of anthropological research, while available studies in the vein of economic anthropology are mostly concerned with realities of the “Global South” or societies with “mixed economy”, these contributions are based on actual fieldwork material and represent an attempt at ethnographic reconstruction and anthropological analysis of trade through particular cases of European regions, such as Greece, Kosovo, Sardinia, Sicily, Germany, and Iceland. The contributors employ novel approaches to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of this theme in the context of contemporary culture.

The study analyzes from the anthropological viewpoint the transformation of trade relations, trade transactions, the inclusion of men and women of different ages, representatives of various ethnic groups, religions and strata of society in the circulation of goods and services in the territory of Kosovo/Kosovo and Metohija at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. From a quiet “province” of the Ottoman Empire, royal Yugoslavia and the SFRY, the historical region has turned into the forefront of confrontation between both Balkan elites and international forces. Leaving aside, as far as possible, the multi-vector discussion regarding the status of the territory/region/state, the author focuses on the social and cultural aspects of the type of activity and economic sphere that directly and acutely affect all residents of the region without exception – be they Albanians, Serbs, Turks, Gorans or Roma, Muslims or Christians, rich, poor or middle class – namely, trade. Growing all over the world, both in the business community and among professional researchers studying culture and society, the interest in corporate anthropology is due to the importance of the ethnic factor in the development strategy of individual states and the global economy, and this involves the collection of empirical data and an attempt to assess the risks of conducting business, trade, scientific and other projects that directly affect people’s lives and influence their social “well-being”.

The article undertakes an anthropological examination of Italian historical markets which are well known but, surprisingly, have been little studied to date. This ancient trade institution has not just survived through the present day, but in fact it has not lost its vitality and still enjoys unusually high popularity among the locals. I attempt to address the aspects of its existence that had not previously been given enough research attention: the human components of markets, their gender, ethnic, and social composition, the relationships between sellers and buyers, as well as the reasons these rather archaic trading structures continue to enjoy high social ratings. I argue that these markets are more than just places of trade; they represent special social and cultural spaces in the context of communal life – certain places of memory – which distinguishes them from regular markets in the usual sense. In this study, I make extensive use of field materials, given the lack of scholarly publications on the subject.

The article focuses on the post-crisis representation of Iceland through souvenirs as the result of the negotiation between the “tourist gaze” and the “local gaze”. Drawing on the materials of field work in Reykjavik as well as media articles, I analyze the impact of tourist boom on souvenir production; the local strategies of the “proper” souvenirs’ promotion; the shifting of the most popular souvenirs towards the “local” or the “tourist” due to the influence of the “mutual gaze”.

In this article, we attempt to present an intellectual biography of the prominent Buryat ethnographer and public educator Matvei Khangalov (1858–1918). He remains an important figure in the Buryat public community, yet little attention has been paid to his life and work in anthropological studies. Drawing on archival and literary sources, as well as various recollections of his contemporaries, we explore his family background, pedagogical activities, public engagement, scholarly legacy and publications, tracing the chronology of his academic career and the scope of his field research and academic collaborations. The new findings shed light on the historical circumstances, shaped by the specific development of Mongol studies and ethnography within the Russian Empire, that provided the scholar with the opportunity to fully realize his creative potential.

The author examines the world distribution of mythological motifs peculiar for Northeast Africa but absent in other parts of this continent. The corresponding narratives describe the events of the time of creation, objects and beings localized at the ultimate limits of the human world as well as episodes of the journeys of heroes to these limits. The motifs in question are absent in Central Asia and Siberia but found across Western, South and Southeast Asia, in Oceania and across the New World. Considering such distribution, these stories probably appeared at the early stages of the peopling of the oikumene (definitely before the peopling of the New World) and were brought to Africa by the populations engaged into the Eurasian back-migrations that were going since the Terminal Pleistocene and possibly earlier.

The breaking of dishes at weddings is known to all Slavs. It accompanies the most important stages of the ritual and symbolizes the change of the young couple’s social status. This action in the Don wedding tradition reveals a number of meanings, which are united by the symbolism of the ritual transition of the wedding participants, especially the bride, as well as the newlywed and their mothers. Often “pot beating” is part of the whole micro rites, including various manipulations with dishes and its fragments. Sweeping up the shards of broken crockery is the most stable element of the ritual, which can be combined with other components and performed as an independent action. In the memory of old residents of Don villages and farms for a long time there were actions (breaking a pot on the belly of the mothers-in-law, putting a chicken or a rooster into it, throwing crock-pots into the fire and jumping over it), behind which there are archaic folk beliefs related to the conclusion of marriage. However, the general orientation of breaking dishes in the Don tradition changes in the direction of increasing entertainment and competition.

День зимнего солнцестояния 2023 г. для многих поделил время на “до” и “после”. Ушел из жизни Сергей Александрович Арутюнов. Вопрос – куда – остается открытым для человечества ровно столько, сколько человечество существует, однако Сергей Александрович своей жизнью и мыслью сделал эту тайну всех тайн для нас чуть более понятной.