Narrating the Future in Siberia

Olga Ulturgasheva is Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge. She has carried out fieldwork for a decade in Siberia on childhood, youth, religion, reindeer herding and hunting. She is a co-editor of Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Berghahn Books 2012).

• Acknowledgements Introduction * Narrating the future * My own return * The Eveny and the village of Topolinoye * Previous literature on the Eveny and other indigenous communities of Siberia * Summary of the book Chapter 1. Future autobiographies and their spaces * Research in the field: introducing case studies * Contact for case studies and sampling * Gender and kinship * Age cohorts * Oral and written * Narrative and 'future autobiography' Chapter 2. Eveny childhood and adolescence * Djuluchen: the composition of child and adolescent personhood * Childhood and narrative * Coming of age Chapter 3. Forest and village * Forest and village in local cosmologies of movement * The social world of the forest * The village: social context today * Complexities of engagement with antagonistic spaces Chapter 4. Three future autobiographies * The story of Tonya, a forest girl * The stories of village adolescents: Vera and Grisha * Vera * Grisha Chapter 5. Reindeer and child in the forest chronotope * Reindeer as a nonhuman component of child personhood * Reindeer as child: Tonya on learning and teaching * The forest chronotope in narrative Chapter 6. The village as domain of unhappiness: broken families and the curse of the GULAG * Wandering spirits of the dead and the curse of the GULAG * Unhappy families: children's futures and parents' pasts Chapter 7. Cosmologies of the future in the shadow of djuluchen * Personhood: hero and shaman * Time: cycles with and without destination * 'Future autobiography' as an activator of djuluchen Conclusion References Notes Glossary Index

" - an original and thought-provoking study [that is]firmly situated in the relevant Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet ethnographic and historical literature - It also makes excellent use of the extensive Russian ethnographic work in this region." * Julie Cruikshank, University of British Columbia " - a very good study, compellingly and confidently written, which covered a relatively unknown subject - The ethnography of this book is excellent." * Heather Montgomery, The Open University, UK