Socio-Cultural Anthropology of the Peoples of Asia and Africa in Discourse of Oriental Studies

Abstract

In this article, the research supervisor (Bocharov V. V) and consultant (Dyakov N. N.) of the new master’s program “Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Peoples of Asia and Africa”, which will be opened at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of St. Petersburg State University in 2021, share the motives that prompted its creation. According to them, the goal of the program is to bring the study of “modernity” back into the fold of Oriental Studies, as a science of Eastern (Oriental) cultures. Moreover, scientific activity in this direction should contribute to the creation of a theory of the development of the East, since the accumulated material on the socio-political practices of modern states in the region indicates, on the one hand, the presence of obvious universals, and, on the other hand, they are significantly different from the Western processes that are identical in form. Otherwise, states (even those that have surpassed the West in many respects), are doomed to remain in the status of “underdeveloped”. The reason for this is the dominance of the evolutionary paradigm (“savagery — barbarism — civilization”), where “civilization” is the standard of society’s progressiveness, which has actually turned it into a kind of ideologeme. The development of such a new theory also has an important socio-political significance because the discourse of “underdevelopment” (sous-développement) in many respects gives rise to revolutionism (a characteristic of the East) under the slogans of overcoming it, which is always a threat to state collapse, chaos, and, in the end, humanitarian catastrophe. The anthropological approach is the basis of the international Russian-Armenian scientific project (SPbSU — PAARA — YSU), supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Committee on Science of the Armenian Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport. The member of the project V. G. Geghamyan who specializes in studying the political culture of Turkey, also shares his thoughts on the “program” and the role that its methodology plays in its successful implementation.