25.04.2025
A new episode of the Rector Loginov’s podcast “The Art of Enrolling” with Valery Tishkov, Director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at RSUH, about the unique interdisciplinary model for training anthropologist specialists and their demand on the global and Russian labor markets.
Rector Loginov:
Dear colleagues, dear friends, today we have a very special guest – Director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian State University for the Humanities, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an outstanding ethnologist and historian, Valery Tishkov. The Institute was created quite recently, but its creation was preceded by several decades of work by the Center for Social Anthropology at RSUH. We have now transformed this Center into the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology to train professionals in this very interesting and exciting specialty.
Professor Tishkov:
It was your initiative, Andrey Viktorovich, to transform our Center into an Institute. We received this initiative very positively because for more than 20 years, since 2000, our Center for Social Anthropology had been operating. A lot has been accomplished, several hundred graduates trained, and this experience has allowed us to take a step forward and become an Institute. This means, first of all, that we can expand the range of programs we offer, admit more students, and take a more serious approach to research.
In our country, the situation developed in such a way that for a long time our science was called ethnography. In the 19th century, in 1845, when the Russian Geographical Society was founded, an ethnographic commission immediately appeared within it. This year we are celebrating its 180th anniversary.
We have renamed the discipline and slightly broadened its horizons. The Institute is now called the "the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology". The name is similar, but now ethnology comes first. And what is another peculiarity of the discipline in our country? The fact that anthropology here was, for a long time, mainly physical: studying bone remains, biological features. Now it is called "physical or biological anthropology".
Rector Loginov:
Students majored in it at the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University.
Professor Tishkov:
Yes, and they still do. And in our Center, we also have professors of biological sciences, so we maintain this tradition.
Rector Loginov:
But they also acquire knowledge in cultural anthropology.
Professor Tishkov:
Absolutely, and we created the Center for Social Anthropology precisely for this reason. This was an innovation at the time; now it has been accepted and recognized, and other departments have opened at other leading universities, though there are still not many of them.
Rector Loginov:
So, in fact, anthropology, in a serious academic and methodological sense, is a key discipline at RSUH, and without the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, we could not have created such synergy, complementarity, and interdisciplinarity.
Professor Tishkov:
First, we study physical or biological anthropology and human ethology. Ethology is a discipline within our meta-discipline that studies fundamental behavioral patterns that have been traceable since ancient evolutionary times. Secondly, I would like to highlight the tracks we have developed at RSUH. First of all, we teach ethnography of world regions, particularly of our own country. This is fundamental. After all, the ethno-cultural and confessional specificity of our country as a civilization-state, one of the world's largest nations, requires careful attention. Our primary task is to know our country, to monitor everything related to preserving ethno-cultural diversity and intangible cultural heritage within the framework of a recently adopted law.
Of course, we pay great attention to indigenous small-numbered peoples and unique cultures: the peoples of the Arctic zone, the North, Siberia, the Far East, the Caucasus, highland regions, the North Caucasus, Dagestan, Altai, and Southern Siberia. And I must say, we are actively developing the study of the Russians, the Russian ethnography. Moreover, we are very interested in the outside world. This follows the traditions of Russian ethnography, going back to Miklouho-Maclay or even Afanasy Nikitin. We conduct research on Australia, Africa, and are now very actively working in China, especially in border regions. As long as the world remains diverse, the demand for ethnographers and ethnologists will continue.
Rector Loginov:
Indeed, this is quite a young science, although we can recall ancient geographers like Strabo and Herodotus, whose works contain extensive ethnographic material. But as a formal discipline, it emerged only by the end of the 19th century.
Over the course of its existence, in terms of intellectual development, I would even compare it to nuclear physics, such were the efforts invested. Anthropology has been, throughout several generations of social scientists, a trigger for studies on human origins, culture, the development of social and political organizations, religious views, and spiritual culture. Serious generalizing social science models have been drawn from ethnographic material, as we all well know. This shows that it is not only a theoretical science but also a field-based research. Ethnographic research methods, which you have mentioned while discussing your studies of small towns and Russian communities abroad, remain highly significant.
In many cases, these methods complement and even surpass sociological research, and true ethnographers, real anthropologists, must undergo training that includes working in the field.
Professor Tishkov:
That is the professional foundation of our discipline, distinguishing us from historians, for whom archives and documents are the main sources, and from sociologists, for whom surveys and questionnaires are crucial, or political scientists who study documents and statements. We practice what is known as participant observation, the detailed study of the smallest groups. We strive to follow international standards of ethnography when training students. Field research is mandatory. In addition, because of the great interest in both the world and our own diversity (not just ethnic but also linguistic) we offer expanded language training, including two foreign languages. And another thing: why did ethnography become so important? Because such a vast space as Russia must be studied as it is populated by incredibly diverse communities! Understanding them was necessary for effective governance. As Catherine the Great said, when you have a hundred peoples, each must have a garment tailored specifically for them.
And then, of course, there are our positive world ambitions. We want to be a great power, a country of global significance, and to achieve this, we must know the outside world.
Rector Loginov:
If we look at global examples, we see that anthropologists are now either outsourced or directly employed by large resource extraction corporations, and this has become common practice.
Just as common is the presence of anthropologists in embassies, not only of the United States but other major countries as well. I would also like to mention another important aspect. You know, we received our education at a time when we were taught that religious belief would disappear as humanity approached communism, and that humanity would eventually become a single, happy mass without ethnic and cultural distinctions, a unified group of people, a unified culture. That was the communist ideal. In essence, we were being trained for a profession that was supposedly destined to disappear. But life disproved those assumptions and plans.
Today, if you look at the global newsfeed, you’ll see almost daily stories where the underlying causes are either religious or ethnic. The demand for anthropologists in regional government bodies and municipalities in Russia is very high. Today, each major administrative structure has a department responsible for internal policy, and there, undoubtedly, specialists and professionals are needed.
Professor Tishkov:
We are pleased and proud that the Rector of our University is himself an ethnographer. This alone proves that with this profession, one can achieve much in life.
Rector Loginov:
ladies and gentlemen, we gave a little behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology operates.
