Russian legal anthropology: from empirical ethnography to applied innovation

This chapter traces the development of legal anthropology in Russia from imperial times to the present. The authors suggest an innovative research agenda based on thorough consideration of Russia’s long history of legal ethnography, a strong applied orientation, and interdisciplinary cooperation between legal scholars and anthropologists, which ideally would start from the conception of a research project and would include joint fieldwork. They provide a brief overview of the different types of studies of law and society in Russia that claim the name ‘legal anthropology’ (iuridicheskaia antropologiia, antropologiia pravo), but which in fact come out of different disciplines; have different approaches, aims, and orientations; and are not in conversation with one another. On the basis of their fieldwork, the authors identify two contrasting types of societies that exist among the Indigenous peoples of Russia: non-state societies (on the example of the Nenets in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) and almost-state societies (on the basis of the Sakha in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)). The examples illustrate why, in one society, non-state legal activity is pragmatically geared towards ‘getting things done’ and solving internal questions, while in the other there is a quest to contribute to legislative processes on a more general, countrywide level. Doing so also means mapping the cultural diversity of the current social life of legal systems that coexist within one state. This has both scholarly and practical value and can lead to wider recognition of legal anthropology as a unified field within and beyond academic scholarship.