Субэтнические группы алтайцев: противоречия и символы коллективной идентичности

Arzhana P. Chemchieva

doi:10.25178/nit.2017.1.9

Authors

Arzhana P. Chemchieva Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian branch, Russian Academy of Sciences

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2017.1.9

Keywords:

Altai people; Kumandin; Tubalar; Chelkans; Telengit; Teleut; sub-ethnic groups; sub-ethnicities; symbol; identity; Republic of Altai

Abstract

The article examines contemporary ethnic processes in the Altai ethnicity and its sub-ethnic groups. We provide an overview of the most fundamental concepts of intraethnic structure of the Altai people as advanced by Russian researchers. Although the issue of ethnic classification of the indigenous people of the Altai has been discussed in ethnography since the 19th century, it still remains a moot point among researchers.

In the post-Soviet period, this issue became still more urgent as the sub-ethnic groups of the Altai people were officially recognized as Protected indigenous minorities. This new legal status seems to suggest that the unified ethnicity of the Altai has collapsed, but such a concept does not allow to take a wide look at how the Altai people is developing, since the centrifugal tendencies are also accompanied by constitutive ethnic tendencies.

Having analyzed the data of two federal censuses (2002, 2010) and those of ethnosociological studies held in the Republic of Altai in 2004-2016, we describe the contemporary ethnic identities of subethnicities of the Altai people, with a focus on the key symbols of their collective identity: historical territory, language, culture, common roots and historical destinies.

We argue that the contemporary ethnic trends among the Altai people – both constitutive and divisive – form a part of a larger process of self-determination among the sub-ethnicities of the Altai. This self-determination happens simultaneously on the planes of the political and the ethnic. At the same time, these two types of self-determination are not identical, and this is why many people in the Altai sub-ethnicities, while possessing a political identity of a protected indigenous minority, continue to self-identify as both belonging to an ethnic sub-group and the Altai ethnicity in general.

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