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Ryzhakova S. Remembering India: Ethnographic Notes and Observations as Source and Research Method

S. Ryzhakova
N. N. Miklukho-Makhlay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Science
Moscow, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0002-8707-3231
E-mail: SRyzhakova@gmail.com

 

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ABSTRACT. The article presents and analyzes ethnographic observations based on field diaries and memoirs of the well-known Russian anthropologist Sergey Arutyunov (1932–2023), a participant in the Indo-Soviet anthropological expeditions in the 1970s–1980s. During long conversations with the author of the article in 2020–2023, Sergei Aleksandrovich introduced the theme of a prospective collective project, “Indigenous India on the Eve of Great Changes: Ethnographic Observations during the Indo-Soviet Expeditions of the 1970s–1980s, and the Current View”. The project would involve a combination of memories of the past and revisiting places where research took place forty years ago. The paper discusses the idea of this project and several features of the ethnographic material obtained during conversations and in the process of our study of diaries, photographic materials, and memoirs. The author suggests that memories can be analyzed both as texts and as a process; they can serve as a source base and act as a method of working to transform disparate and fragmentary events of everyday life into ethnographic material.

 

KEYWORDS: memoirs, observations, ethnographic sources, anthropological expeditions, indigenous/rural India 

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2024-3(25) -230-259
UDC 39 (540)

 

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