ABSTRACT
The Russian Far North will be equated with Siberia. Siberia is more a political than a geographic label, designating all Russian possessions east of the Ural mountains. This chapter explores the terms ‘social anthropology of Siberia’, ‘Siberian anthropology’, and ‘Siberian ethnography’ more or less interchangeably to label anthropological work conducted in Siberia, regardless of whether it is in the tradition of Soviet ‘ethnography’ or of western ‘social anthropology’. It provides a chronological framework that will introduce the major scholars and their contributions and situate them within the intellectual of their times. This chronological treatment will be subdivided into three periods which can be labeled loosely ‘pre-Soviet’, ‘Soviet’, and ‘post-Soviet’. Real consolidation of Soviet scholarship on Siberia was marked by the publication of ‘The Peoples of Siberia’. Anthropological studies of Siberia that critically investigate the present enjoy an uneven historical fate.
