Read more
The book traces the conceptual lens of historical-cultural 'survivals' from the late 19th-century theories of E.B. Tylor, James Frazer, and others, in debate with monotheistic 'degenerationists' and Protestant anti-Catholic polemicists, back to its origins in Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions as well as later more secularized forms in the German Enlightenment and Romanticist movements. These historical sources, particularly the 'dual faith' tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, significantly shaped both Tsarist and later Soviet ethnography of Muslim Central Asia, helping guide and justify their respective religious missionary, social-legal, political and other imperial agendas. They continue impacting post-Soviet historiography in complex and debated ways.
Drawing from European, Central Asian, Middle Eastern and world history, the fields of ethnography and anthropology, as well as Christian and Islamic studies, the volume contributes to scholarship on 'syncretism' and'conversion', definitions of Islam, history as identity and heritage, and more. It is situated within a broader global historical frame, addressing debates over 'pre-Islamic Survivals' among Turkish and Iranian as well as Egyptian, North African Berber, Black African and South Asian Muslim Peoples while critiquing the legacy of the Geertzian 'cultural turn' within Western post-colonialist scholarship in relation to diverging trends of historiography in the post-World War Two era.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: Historical Sources of Tsarist 'Survivals' Ethnography.- Chapter 2: Religious-Cultural 'Survivals' in Euro-American and Euro-Slavic Christian and Secular Sources.- Chapter 3: Middle Eastern and Central Asian Islamic Sources of 'Survivals' Historiography.- Chapter 4: 'Pre-Islamic Survivals' among the Kazakhs in Tsarist Russian and Kazakh Colonial Ethnography, 1770-1917.- Part II: Historical Sources of Soviet 'Survivals' Ethnography.- Chapter 5: Sources and Aims of Soviet 'Survivals' Ethnography in Its Initial (Pre-World War Two) Phases.- Chapter 6: Transformations of Soviet 'Survivals' Ethnography in the Post-World War Two Period.- Part III: Historiographical Constructions of and Debates Over Kazakh Religious History and Identity in Late Tsarist, Soviet and Post-Soviet Scholorship.- Chapter 7: The Early Twentieth-Century Chernavsky-Dobrosmyslov Debate: Did Catherine the Great (r. 1762-96) Help Convert the Kazakhs to Islam?.- Chapter 8: The Framing of Kazakh Religious History and Identity in Post-World War Two Soviet Kazakh Publications.- Chapter 9: Religious-Cultural Revivalism as Historiographical Debate: Post-Soviet Kazakh Perspectives on Their Past.- Chapter 10: Retrospect & Prospect: Placing Post-Soviet "Survivals" Scholarship Within a World Historiographical Frame.
About the author
R. Charles Weller, Associate Professor of History (Career), Washington State University, and Senior Research Fellow, Department of Religion and Culture, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
