Defence of Nikolai Anisimov's doctoral thesis on dialogue between the worlds in Udmurt communicative behaviour

Nikolai Anisimov will defend his doctoral thesis "Dialogue between the worlds through the lens of Udmurt communicative behaviour" ("Диалог миров» в матрице коммуникативного поведения удмуртов")  on Friday, 10. November at 12:15.

Supervisors:
Senior Research Fellow Madis Arukask, PhD, University of Tartu
Associate Professor Galina Glukhova, Udmurt State University (Russia)

Opponents:
Dr Aado Lintrop, Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum
Dr Jelena Popova,  Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature (Russia)

Description of the problem
The Udmurt culture is exceptionally rich: it is a modern culture which roots and unique worldview are very deep and strong and manifest in Udmurts' everyday life. Although Finno-Ugric cultures have been studied in Estonia for a long time, including the Udmurt culture, the latter is not widely known.

This dissertation is dedicated to an analysis of the interaction between the world of the dead and the world of the living in traditional Udmurt culture. In the context of spatial and temporal representations, and using the example of family rituals connected with birth and death, the author examines Udmurt communicative (sacral and ordinary) behaviour. Birth and death give precise images of the interaction of the worlds, while they reflect the archaic worldview and its representations. These are critical periods in which ordinary time and space are transformed and become sacral, motivating communication from the individuals and the community, enhancing the semantic signification of the environment (objects, phenomena, people, etc.) and encompassing many transition rituals of the life cycle. According to mythological representations, the transformation of society’s structure, and thus of the whole world, with the birth and the death of one person, implies the interpenetration of the worlds (the new-born comes from the other world, while the deceased returns there), something that provokes both contact with the other world and sacral communication with its inhabitants.

Result and benefit

This study opened up the new facets of Udmurt culture (terminology, ritual practice, mythological representations), which was not previously addressed or thoroughly dealt with. According to the author, the abstract material contributed and opened new perspectives not only to study the Udmurt culture, but also to preserve and fix the Udmurt people's tradition.
For many of the phenomena studied, the author found parallels in both the Finno-Ugric region and in Europe and Asia more widely, giving the work a wider geographic dimension and allowing to assess the perspectives of future research.
Relying on different examples of ethno-communicative and ethno-psychological representations and stereotypes gathered in the fieldwork, the author attempted to perceive a mould for Udmurt communicative behaviour in the framework of the ‘dialogue of worlds’. Throughout the research he insists on the contemporary situation, reflecting local and generational variations in communication with the world beyond. Author's reflexive experiences, which are reflected in the dissertation’s material, are significant. This research is based on the author’s fieldwork material collected over a decade (2007-2017), as well as on archive sources and data from scientific literature.
The benefit of the research lies in the fact that the fieldwork materials were transferred to a wider scientific circle, the Udmurt mythology dictionary is being compiled based on the materials of the dissertation and the systematization of the stereotypes of the Udmurts behavior is an opportunity for further research.

Organizer: Kultuuriteaduste ja kunstide instituudi koordinaator Hille Roots
Location: Ülikooli 18-140
URL: hdl.handle.net/10062/58074