About the evolution of views on the character of the natives of the Tobol North in the 19th – early 20th centuries

Abstract

For Russia, studies of outlying lands are among socially significant problems. One of the barriers to obtaining reliable results is informational. Often, external observers arrive on the periphery with previously formed cultural stereotypes. The objective of the publication is to consider the patterns and opinions that guided European travelers when they studied the culture of indigenous peoples in the 19th early 20th centuries. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to resolve a number of tasks: to analyze the temporal representations associated with progress; clarify exactly how observers perceived space and local societies that lived in cyclical time; assess interethnic contacts between civilized peoples and aborigines; briefly describe the social recipes for overcoming the cultural backwardness of indigenous peoples. The methodological basis of the study was the use of an interdisciplinary approach, including the theoretical provisions of anthropology. The results obtained prove the presence of subjective moments when writing ethnographic reviews, travel and fiction essays. Stable clichs were used to reveal the national character of the natives. The existence of such clichs is evidence of the presence of stereotypes about the life of northern peoples in the public mind. The orientation of the observers to predominantly pragmatic grounds turned into a kind of mental "movement" of the natives, the objects of research, beyond the boundaries of the human world, into the beyond, where their life was supposedly close to the animal state. These circumstances are most significant for the understanding of reforms in the peripheral territories, the study of the origin and subsequent historical evolution of ethnic stereotypes. The optimal direction for further developments in this matter is the consistent identification and historical criticism of sources about the life of the indigenous population of the Tobolsk North.