For at least a century, scholars have argued about whether or not Buddha is considered a god. We treat this question empirically by conducting two ethnographic studies among residents of the Tyva Republic, one of the Buddhist republics in the Russian Federation. Using a mixed methods approach to interrogate the question, this report concludes that Buddha is, in fact, popularly represented as a punitive and moralistic supernatural agent in the republic and demographic factors co-vary with such beliefs. The paper addresses longstanding concerns and situates the results in contemporary social scientific inquiry that addresses questions of when, where, to what degree, and why he is represented as a deity.

The age of globalization has often been associated with de-/re-territorialization processes. The increasing integration of markets and the appearance of new modes of economic production and capital accumulation on the one hand, and the transformation of forms of political governance on the other, have led to the emergence of new territorial actors at the supra-national and sub-national scales. While these economic and political de-/re-territorialization processes have been studied at length, relatively little attention has been paid to the transformation of the territorial identities associated with these spaces. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, it aims to understand whether territorial identities are experiencing a similar re-scaling along with modes of economic production and forms of political governance. Second, it explores which factors today explain the attachment of people to their territories. A descriptive analysis of Eurobarometer survey data for Western Europe reveals no signs of a re-scaling of territorial identities, pointing to a sort of inertia of these identities in relation to the changing of political and economic structures. A statistical model on four scales of territorial attachment (local, regional, national and European) shows the complexity of its formation, as both personal compositional and regional contextual factors should be taken into account.

Using results from a 2010 survey conducted in the Republic of Buryatia, this paper compares the responses of Russians and Buryats on questions of religious practice and belief, as well as the role of religion and religious organizations in the political sphere of contemporary Russia. Buryats more commonly identify with a religion and more frequently attend religious services in comparison to Russians living in the republic. There is greater consonance between the two groups on the public role of religion, with both Russians and Buryats generally supportive of the recent extension of religious education into schools and the creation of national holidays for all traditional religions, among other issues.

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