![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
The multiplicity of ethnic and cultural identities of residents of large cities derives from a series of factors. Of particular significance is whether they come from a rural or urban locale, the focus of the article is interviews conducted with families of Kazan residents who self-identify as Tatars and Russians who have revealed substantive differences in the intensity and content of their associations with their “own” ethnic group. They vary in language practices, in knowledge and observance of traditional rites and holidays, and in how ethnic identities are manifest in cultural preferences and in mapping ethnic-cultural boundaries of the featured groups. At the same time, interview transcripts have revealed attitudes, values, and cultural preferences that appear shared by the majority of Kazan residents, both Russian and Tatar.
Sources and Materials
PIS—Semiformal interviews in families of Kazan, 2010–11 (interviews: N 1, Tatar female, age 44; N 3, 1—Tatar male, age 23, 2—Tatar male, age 16; N 4, Tatar male, age 47; N 6, 1—Russian male, age 21, 2—Russian female, age 49; N 7, 1—Tatar male, age 24, 2—Tatar female, age 24; N 8, 1—Tatar female, age 51, 2—Tatar male, age 51, 3—Tatar male, age 52; N 9, Russian female, age 21; N 14, 1—Russian female, age 46, 2—Russian female, age 26; N 15, 1—Russian female, age 45, 2—Russian male, age 45; N 16, from a mixed marriage, age 20, N 18, 1—Tatar male, age 16, 2—Tatar female, age 39; N 19, Russian female, age 48; N 20, Russian female, age 40, in a mixed marriage; N 21, Russian female, age 55; N 22, Russian female, age 22; N 23, 1—Russian male, age 20, 2—Russian female, age 45; N 24, 1—Russian male, age 49, 2—Russian female, age 52, 3—Russian female, age 18; N 25, Tatar male, age 57; N 26, Tatar female, age 22; N 27, Russian male, age 53; N 28, Tatar female, age 40; N 30, Tatar male, age 24; N 31, Tatar female, age 22; N 33, Tatar female, age 19; N 35, Russian female, age 59; N 35, 1—male, from a mixed marriage, age 24, 2—female, from a mixed marriage, age 30; N 36, Tatar female, age 21; N 38, 1—Tatar female, age 57, 2—Tatar female, age 56; N 43, Russian female, age 40; N 45, Russian female, age 35.
Notes
1. Traditional culture is understood here, per a number of ethnographers, as folk [narodnaia] or folkloric [folklornaia] (Mamontova Citation1997).
2. In 2010, interviews were supported by the Centre franco-russe de recherches en sciences humaines et sociales de Moscou (lead G. Makarova), in 2011—with the support of the RGNF, N 10-03-00037a (lead investigator G. I. Makarova).
3. Informants were selected by searching for telephone numbers in the appointment books of acquaintances. Initially, formal features (“ethnicity by surname”) were taken into account. Subsequently, respondents had opportunities during recruitment and during the interviews to define whether they self-identified with one or the other ethnic community. In the process of analysis, a three-step coding method, elaborated within the framework of established theory, was applied to the data (Strauss and Corbin 2001).
4. A distinction is retained between Tatars and Russians in the degree of their urbanization. According to the 2002 census data, 88% of Russians and 75% of Tatars in Tatarstan resided in cities.
5. The surveys of 1989–90, 1994, and 2012 carried out under the leadership of Leokadia M. Drobizheva, among others.
6. We did not do interviews with Tatars who call themselves Kryashen because their identity requires separate study.
7. E.A. Khodzhaeva’s research indicates an aversion on the part of youth—including those who nominally adhere to Islam—toward the way of life, norms of behavior, and clothing of Muslims who observe religious practice (Khodzhaeva Citation2013, p. 308).
8. The percentage of Tatars significantly increased in the cities of Tatarstan in the 1990s (the period of the youth of interviewees in the parents’ generation). Thus, according to the 1989 census, Russians comprised 50.8 percent of Tatarstan’s urbanites and Tatars 42.1 percent; in 2002 it was 46.1 percent and 47.7 percent, respectively.
9. According to the 2010 census, Tatars continue to predominate in rural locales—67.3 percent.
10. That is, rites solemnizing birth, death, or marriage.
11. The 2010 mass survey (lead investigator G. I. Makarova) noted that 21.7 percent of Tatars and a mere 7.5 percent of Russian urbanites consider interethnic marriages undesirable. More Russians noted that “nationality in a marriage does not have significance, if the husband (wife) communicates in the family in the language of my people, treats its cultural traditions with understanding” (20.8 percent among urbanites, 14.7 percent among Tatars) (Makarova Citation2010, p. 116).
12. Forty-six qualitative semiformal interviews were conducted at that time in families of Russians and mixed families of Kazan and Naberezhnye Chelny.
13. According to the 2001 and 2010 survey data, the share of those who “never forget about their nationality” increased by one and a half times and gradually approached half among urbanite Russians over the period between the research studies (from 30.6 percent in 2001 to 44.0 percent in 2010). The number of city Russians in the region for whom nationality does not have significance fell in roughly the same proportions (Makarova Citation2010, pp. 98–102).
14. Note that in recent years, the cultural policy of the Russian Federation has once again started to change in the direction of recognizing the country’s ethno-cultural diversity.
a. Some of these survey projects have been featured in this journal. See, for example, “Tatars” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 2004-5, vol. 43, nos. 2 and 3. For context concerning Tatar language debates, see “Alphabet Wars” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 2007, vol. 46, no. 1.