Sibirica

This article discusses urban ethnic Sakha bilinguals and their language ideologies and choices, especially with regard to the language socialization of their children—both at home and within the educational system. The usage of the Sakha language within urban spaces has been on the rise in the post-Soviet years, but still tends to be acquired in the home environment as a first language, whereas Russian is acquired later in the public sphere and reinforced in the educational system. The article explores some of the ideological and structural barriers toward Sakha acquisition and maintenance that speakers face, with apprehension regarding bilingualism and the mastery of two languages in educational contexts being a key concern for many Sakha parents. The article also discusses language instruction—especially in schools—in light of the need to begin to accommodate those with little or no Sakha knowledge in order to continue to increase the usage of Sakha by urban speakers.

This analysis of the mythical Old Man—a cannibal character in the tales of the Forest Yukaghirs (Odul)—considers the significance of a particular genre of song in Odul folklore. The article highlights discrepancies among the ethical norms that emerge in Odul folklore representing problems faced in everyday life. These tales are interpreted in terms of human/non-human, insider/outsider, attraction/protection, and a number other dichotomies, as well as the form of recitation.

This article revisits the trope of the runaway bride, a popular means of narrating the conversion to Orthodoxy of Buriat women during the nineteenth century that depicted women's conversions as pragmatic and lacking religious meaning. Using petitions and memoranda from church archives, Murray finds that encounters between Buriats and missionaries over the conversion and remarriage of Buriat women served as a powerful means of incorporating the Buriats into the Russian Empire by producing new, imperially shaped possibilities for Buriat self-definition. Women seeking conversion and remarriage utilized conceptions about women's individual rights within marriage based in discourses about marriage and patriarchy then widespread in central Russia. Men contesting the remarriage of wives and daughters treated Buriat custom as a formally sanctioned branch of imperial law, transforming flexible custom into codified, inflexible customary law.

This article examines altruistic social norms among the Dolgans and the Nganasans in Arctic Siberia, drawing on and integrating experimental game theory and semiotic approaches. The article demonstrates the complementarity of these two methodologies in order to more fully understand how sharing is promoted over individual self-aggrandizement in a communal-resource property regime. Any theory of social norms should be of some practical benefit for solving current environmental dilemmas, as well as for increasing understanding of the factors lending sustainability to human-environment relationships. With that goal in mind, the article presents results of experimental games conducted in the Taimyr Autonomous Region in 2003, along with an analysis of indigenous communication (sayings, aphorisms, taboos, etc.) aimed at the promotion of altruistic social norms. A synthesis of the two approaches is outlined with implications for the broader literature on hunting peoples across the north and beyond.

The evolutionary importance of religion is a topic of considerable debate in recent scholarship. This article reassesses Neil Gordon Munro's ethnography of the Ainu people in Hokkaido area focusing attention on the Chisei Nomi ceremony. Munro describes kamui (ancestor spirits), who take part in the Chisei Nomi as active, observant, non-living persons. The ritual acts in the Chisei Nomi ceremony are reinterpreted using recent theoretical perspectives of perspectivism and evolutionary-communication theory. The Chisei Nomi promotes a healthy environment for close kin by establishing respect for long deceased ancestors.

Adam Johann von Krusenstern, Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff, Otto von Kotzebue, Adelbert von Chamisso: Forschungsreisen auf Kamtschatka: Auszüge aus den Werken by Marie-Theres Federhofer and Diana Ordubadi, eds. Review by Otto Habeck

Frozen Assets: British Mining, Exploration, and Geopolitics on Spitsbergen, 1904–53 by Frigga Kruse Review by Anna Bara

In the Lands of the Romanovs: An Annotated Bibliography of First-Hand English-Language Accounts of the Russian Empire (1613–1917) by Anthony Cross Review by Oxana Zemtsova

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