Online, 4-6 November 2021
School of Arts and Humanities and Division of Social Anthropology, HSE St Petersburg
Keynotes speakers: Caroline Humphrey (University of Cambridge) and Jeanne Kormina (HSE St Petersburg)
Symposium Organisers
Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, HSE St Petersburg (Russia), Soyuz Convener
Usman Boron, University of Toronto (Canada), Soyuz Programming Coordinator
Taras Fedirko, University of St Andrews (UK), Soyuz Book Review Editor
Symposium Program
Thursday 4 November
15:00 Coffee
15:30 Opening remarks Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (HSE St Petersburg)
16:00 Keynote address Caroline Humphrey (University of Cambridge) “States of Exception” in the Russian Far East
17:00 Discussion
17:30 Keynote address Jeanne Kormina (HSE St Petersburg) Nicholas II body remains in Post-Soviet Russian sovereignty
18:30 Discussion
Keynote discussants:
Taras Fedirko (University of Andrews)
Ronald Suny (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
20:00 Reception
Friday 5 November
13:00 Konstantin Gaaze (Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences) The King’s New Tears: Russian Politics and 21st Century Sovereignty
13:30 Valentina Tanailova (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences and University of Bern) On the anthropology of anthropology of Chechen sovereignty
14:00 Discussion
14:30 Giulia Prelz Oltramonti (Université Catholique de Lille) Performing sovereignty abroad: alternative diplomacies of contested states in the former Soviet Union
15:00 Andrew Graan (University of Helsinki) Diplomatic Tensions: Diplomats’ Speech and the Normative Fiction of Sovereignty in North Macedonia
15:30 Discussion
16:00 Coffee break
16:30 Aleksandar Kostić (Princeton University) Sovereignty of and over the Nature: Activism, State, and Non-Humans in Biodiversity Conservation in Kyrgyzstan
17:00 Lidia Rakhmanova (HSE St Petersburg) River sovereignties: a fisherman, a fish inspector and Agamben’s werewolf in Western Siberia
17:30 Shanni Zhao (Harvard University) The Sexualization of Public Discourses: How the Chinese State Claims Sovereignty Through the Intimate Domain
18:00 Discussion
19:15 Coffee break
19:30 Ivan Peshkov (The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences) The decisionist aspects of denomadization in Chinese Taiga: the case of Reindeer Evenki in Inner Mongolia
20:00 Mayfair Yang (University of California, Santa Barbara) The Jade Emperor: Sovereign Power, Celestial Bureaucracy, and Popular Political Theology in China
20:30 Discussion
Saturday 6 November
13:45 Tatiana Zhuravskaia (Far Eastern Federal University and Economic Research Institute of FEB RAS) Local forms of sovereignty in the Russian Far East: a “higher order” state and depoliticization of access to resources
14:15 Asya Karaseva (European University at St. Petersburg) Habitual emergency: The production of non-exceptionality of floods in the Kolyma region
14:45 Natalia Ryzhova (Palacky University in Olomouc) Who Fights in Former Militarized Settlements of the Russian Far East and for What?
15:15 Discussion
16:00 Coffee break
16:30 Martin Tremčinský (Charles University, Prague) Stateless money and sovereign subjects of the market: The socio-technical imaginary of libertarian subjectivity in Czech and Slovak Bitcoin community
17:00 Amy Garey (University of Chicago) Leagues of Laughter: the Soviet Nation in Post-Soviet Institutions
17:30 Aleksandra Simonova (University of California, Berkeley) Performing infrastructure: the cultural biopolitics of the Russian state in Crimea
18:00 Discussion
18:45 Coffee break
19:00 Christian Sorace (Colorado College) Affective Sovereignty: On Outrage, Sympathy and Gratitude in the People’s Republic of China
19:30 Dominic Martin (University of Oxford) An ellipsis to the Romanovs’ murder
20:00 Discussion
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