Anthropologist, publisher and editor-in-chief of the journal "Archaeology of Russian Death" Sergey Mokhov at the end of last year published the book "The Birth and Death of the Funeral Industry" (an excerpt from we published on the website), and last Thursday presented it in Kazan as part of "Theories of Modernity" - joint project "Inde" and CSK "Change". Felix Sandalov, editor-in-chief of Inde, spoke with Mokhov about childhood trauma that defined the scope of his scientific interests, the powerlifter subculture, and who organized the attack on him and why.

As far as I understand, you wanted to make a book about modern cemeteries in Russia, but in the end it is about the history of cemeteries in different countries. How so?

Yes, it's been weird. Actually, I didn’t study history, I’m not a historian, I don’t have the ability to work in archives and other professional skills. Of course, the emphasis on history is inevitable - it is explained by the fact that any phenomenon that anthropology studies has a historical reason, its own temporality. Water has always been water and the atom has always been an atom, but otherwise we need to know how the nature of what we write about has been transformed over time. What you now see as my book should have been just a small historical chapter. But as I worked, I realized that the number of sources that needed to be introduced into domestic use was growing and I could not stop. As a result, the first chapter ate everything else.

Everything else - what?

I imagine myself primarily as a social anthropologist, a person who is interested in the structure and language of a living community. I'm in the funeral industry in Russia and I'm passionate about how it has evolved and if it could have turned out differently. This is the age-old question: why is it so in Russia? For two years I conducted research in the central regions, dug graves, rubbed myself into the confidence of representatives of the cemetery business, spent more than a hundred days “in the field” and was going to summarize this experience in a book. I wanted to write about contemporary funeral directors through the lens of culture. Now I continue to work with that material, but with less enthusiasm than on The Birth and Death of the Funeral Industry.

I made this book very quickly: there was a wild motivation and a big fuse. After a certain number of thousands of signs, fatigue from this whole story set in. This is probably the main reason.

How did you get interested in this topic?

This is a question about two reasons at once - personal and professional. I can give a pre-prepared speech - "it all started in the second year, blah blah" - but I will answer differently. I often think about how my relationship with death affects my research. And I came to the conclusion that I always had, as psychoanalysts would say, a morbid craving for death. It probably has to do with the experience of my father's death. I was ten. I was in the hospital when my father passed away. When I was discharged, my mother told me about what had happened. And this was said in such a special setting - apparently, she imagined that this is how one should talk about death with children. I did not cry, although it came as a complete surprise to me. I did not know what death was, I was always fenced off from it. Everyone expected tears or hysteria from me, but I only cried at the wake - on purpose, because it was necessary. And that moment had a profound effect on me.

What happened to the father?

He died. The father was a classic bandit from the nineties. I often come across arguments about when the nineties ended - for me they ended in the summer of 2000, when my father was killed. In the nineties, we had a house in Cyprus, a Gelendvagen, an apartment on Taganka with two exits so that we could leave unnoticed when the police were looking for him - my father was specifically looking for this. And when he died, our world completely collapsed - my mother went to a psychiatric hospital, she had never worked before, for her it was a shock. What happened to father? This is a muddy story. He disappeared, no one knew where he was for two weeks. And then he ended up in some clinic with a stroke, where he was brought after he was found. He fell out of someone else's car. Why his friends could not find him for two weeks is unknown, there was a lot of unfinished business on their part. Mom thinks that this is a very bad story, but what exactly was there, we will never know.

Can we say that you have an interest not only in the topic of death, but also in the topic of crime? After all, Russian cemeteries are under the control of criminal structures.

I don't agree. Because in reality this is not a mafia at all - these are semi-criminal elements with a petty criminal past. There is no clear structure. In general, at lectures I am constantly asked this question: “What place does crime occupy in the funeral business in Russia?”. In my view, the mafia is some kind of Sasha Bely and such a semi-power structure. Sociologist Vadim Volkov writes in his works that the mafia has a hierarchy and logic in its actions. But this is not the case in cemeteries. For example, a man served several years for theft, got out, and he and his drunk sidekick began to dig graves. Then one of them began to fuck with a nurse in the morgue, and she began to leak information about the corpses to them. And someone's mother-in-law or wife works in the city administration. In general, such a cluster of people is gradually forming who are engaged in one thing and help each other for money. I don't think it's mafia.

In St. Petersburg - yes, there is a mafia. There are people who have monopolized this business. In Moscow, everything is connected with the Ossetian clan and with the State Budgetary Institution “Ritual”, there are also clear structures. But in general, it seems to me wrong to represent these people in Russia as a funeral mafia. This is a very poorly scalable business: if you occupy one cemetery, then you, as a rule, sit on it. To control the cemetery, you do not need to build a complex hierarchy, develop your own power block, just corruption is enough.

What examples of cemetery descriptions in contemporary Russian culture are relevant to your research?

One of the endings of Prilepin's "Sanka": when the car with the coffin gets stuck in the mud, the main character and his drunk friend drag the coffin through the dark forest at night - a wonderful example of how all the problems of Russian infrastructure are collected in one place. In fact, everything is about the same. This is an infrastructure that is always broken and needs to be fixed every time you use it. Sofya Chuikina, a sociologist, called it a "repair society" - things break down all the time, and something needs to be done with them, but this suits everyone. In the case of a funeral, this takes on paradoxical importance, because for post-Soviet people this is already a full-fledged part of the ritual - you need to overcome all difficulties for the sake of your loved one.

Do you think the state will interfere in this industry?

Yes, definitely. Now the government is facing a problem - the money is running out, it is necessary to look for new sources of income. For twenty-five years, no one was interested in the funeral services market at all, and now everyone is suddenly excited - officials have an idea that financial flows are hidden in it that need to be saddled. According to my information, this year there will be serious progress in this area. Everything will start with the digitization of cemeteries: the authorities will decide that all places in them must be entered in a single register. Under this case, a tender was specially written for Rostelecom - he will take care of the inventory.

But we must understand that structurally nothing will change. Cemeteries are a very expensive and chaotic infrastructure. And the income there is not cosmic. Here in the West, funeral directors quickly realized that cemeteries do not bring money. Why is that?

Your land resource is limited, you cannot sell places indefinitely, and you must maintain the grave for a long time. Therefore, it is necessary to develop some related services - a funeral service, cleaning of graves, selling flowers, and so on. What is the reason for the standardization of American tombstones (in films we usually see how they go into the distance in even rows)? This is necessary to reduce costs, to simplify the lawn mowing process. People rent graves, which can be extended. If all the relatives have died and there is no one to renew, after twenty years the site can be torn up and the coffin removed from there. There is a lot of controversy around this. The American funeral culture stands on massive expensive coffins and good embalming: in twenty years practically nothing happens to the body, it remains almost the same as it was buried. Okay, I digress. In Russia, in this sense, absolute chaos: many cemeteries appear on the map as a result of self-occupation, and when they grow enough, it is easier for the authorities to legalize them than to dig up all the bodies and move them somewhere. And, of course, all this activity is absolutely unprofitable. The price of any funeral service often includes a kickback share, but these are unpredictable expenses for a business and are difficult to account for. And if the state undertakes this... In a good way, the organization of cemeteries is connected with the preparation of the general plan of the city, the supply of roads - that is, with those things that are very difficult for municipalities in small towns to pull off. My colleague Olga Molyarenko did a study that showed that most of the infrastructure in Russia - all of it - is ownerless. Gas pipelines, telegraph poles, roads, and so on do not exist as legal objects. The idea of ​​a public good does not work in Russia. And it is not necessary to count on the fact that with the funeral industry, which has passed into the hands of the state, everything will be somehow different.

Presentation of the book "The Birth and Death of the Funeral Industry" in the St. Petersburg bookstore "Vse are free"

You once said that you had already planned your funeral. How do you see them?

I am not a traditionalist, but I don’t consider new technologies like the messiah (burial of the remains after the decomposition of the body with liquid nitrogen and cold evaporation of water from it in a vacuum chamber. - Approx. Inde) I also don’t consider them, because they don’t exist in Russia and it will be difficult for relatives to do this . I insist on cremation followed by scattering of the ashes.

Cremation is the main trend now?

Yes, this is definitely true, and in the world it is only gaining momentum. True, in Russia the construction of crematoria is blocked by representatives of the cemetery business. There are only two private crematoria in the country - in Novosibirsk and in Tula. Although people are ready to invest and build, this is always a serious risk for the regional authorities - many people have a negative attitude towards cremation, and for the government this is fraught with a loss of loyalty. However, the officials themselves often imagine the crematorium as something like an oven in a concentration camp - a brick building with pipes up to the sky, from which black smoke pours, trucks with bodies stand at the gates, and so on. In fact, this building, which occupies about two hundred square meters, has no pipes and is completely autonomous - you can’t even tell that it’s a crematorium.

What changes have occurred in the last ten years with funerals in Russia?

If earlier it was a process of collective creativity, including a large number of people, now everything is different. There is a wonderful article by Grigory Lurie, where he describes how his grandfather went to the funerals of people he did not know in order to evaluate how they are buried: is it good, is it worthy. It was a whole culture. I collect photographs of the Soviet period - in the photographs of the sixties, for example, you can see how the whole courtyard in Novye Cheryomushki is going to a funeral; the procession went through the city, people joined it. Now there is a dualism of communication: on the one hand, we have more social ties, on the other hand, fewer people come to the funeral. Crowded funerals, as a rule, occur only in the case of the death of young people, when others are shocked by what happened.

In the regions, the situation is a little different: there the funeral is still held quite traditionally, in an eclectic Soviet-Orthodox orientation - with lamentations, with local features. In Lipetsk, for example, the coffin is lifted, shaken vertically, and while this is happening, everyone has to say "goodbye" several times. It looks creepy - it seems that the body is about to fall into the grave. In general, the ritual remains the responsibility of older women who know what to do in such situations. During my field work, I have seen very different deaths - from a man who choked on a ham at breakfast to an old woman with thirteen stab wounds. People die in completely different ways, they are buried in different ways, and, of course, the attitude towards this is gradually changing.

Can you name any particularly symbolic funerals of late? Perhaps the funeral of politicians?

There is still a lot of symbolism in the funeral. As in any events associated with the classical rites of passage - birth, wedding, funeral. They just became much less religiously prescribed, more variable and situational. For example, people themselves prescribe whether it is necessary to put some thing in the coffin that was important for the deceased. The idea of ​​death, of immortality, of where the soul lives after death is changing in general. We often talk about funerals as a practice of disposing of the body, but the matter is not limited to this - it is also a practice of remembrance. For example, today, close people are increasingly leading pages on social networks for the dead, publicly addressing them, leaving messages for them - in a word, they somehow remind their friends of them. This is new. If we talk about the political situation, the death of politicians or activists often becomes an occasion for rallying their supporters. The manifestation of grief allows you to very clearly draw the line between your own and others. When we talk to someone about Nemtsov's death, the interlocutor's reaction allows us to immediately determine his position on many issues.

But at the same time, such symbolic phenomena as Nemtsov's spontaneous memorial on the bridge arise...

The Nemtsov Memorial is not about Nemtsov and not about the funeral, but about the struggle for the right to remember, to the past, and ultimately to the city. But in a sense, spontaneous practices like roadside crosses at crash sites are associated with a much longer stay of the dead near us than was previously accepted. Tony Walter, a remarkable researcher from England, said that the funeral used to be a clear separation between the living and the dead: the cemeteries were separated from the city. And now we see that the dead are increasingly present in our lives, we ourselves let them in, as is the case with these spontaneous memorials, which were unthinkable in the 19th century. I do not agree with the stereotype that in modern society there is a taboo on death, that we avoid talking about it. Vice versa! Many of my friends who are generally non-religious or don't go to church still have a fairly New Age attitude toward the afterlife: "there's something there." And it's amazing.

Don't you think that now death is actively returning to pop culture - to music, to fashion, to cinema - as a romantic image, after the rather meager zero in this regard?

Disagree. But what about zombie movies, modern action movies, games? Researcher Dina Khapaeva writes in her book The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture that in our time, images of monsters eating human flesh are becoming romantic for the first time - the kind that young people want to be like. Previously, vampires and zombies were exclusively negative characters. It seems to me that this romanticism, in principle, did not go anywhere. But there was a silence associated with the Second World War, because such a colossal number of deaths left an imprint on people's consciousness.

After all, zombie movies are not exactly a romantic comprehension.

The question is, through what mechanism do you rationalize it and try it on yourself. You can look at death as in the Middle Ages: then it was believed that it was not terrible, because it was ubiquitous and everyday, total. In modern times, there is an attempt to distance oneself from death, to medicalize it. In the Victorian era, there is a notion that there is something beautiful in death. Now, in my opinion, in the world of representation in this regard, closest to the ideas of the Victorian era. For example, in Russia, many do not understand or actively oppose the manipulation of ashes, from which records, kitchen utensils, diamonds, and so on are made. But how is this different from Victorian vials for collecting tears of grief or jewelry made from the hair of deceased loved ones? Structurally, nothing changes.

What will the fifth issue of the journal “Archaeology of Russian Death” be about, and what do you yourself write about there?

I don't write anything myself: in my opinion, for the editor-in-chief, writing for my own publication is a bitch. Only in the first issue there was my material, and in the rest - a maximum of a review or an interview. The people I work with cannot say: “Mokhov, this is weak,” so from an academic point of view, publishing in your own publication is wrong. And the number is dedicated to cremation - in my opinion, it turned out to be the best of all five that we did.

A video that reveals the other side of Mokhov - a powerlifter

What's happeneddeath studiesand why are they unpopular in Russia? Cross-media project "Last 30" - criticism of the post-Soviet period or an attempt to rethink history? About this and moreTheHSE spoke with social anthropologist and historian Sergei Mokhov.

Who: Sergey Mokhov, graduate of the HSE Faculty of Applied Political Science, social anthropologist, historian

Education: Faculty of Applied Political Science, National Research University Higher School of Economics; PublicHistory at MHSES

Projects: Scientific journal "Archaeology of Russian death" and blog nebokakcofe.ru, cross-media project "Last 30"

death studiesin Russia

It just so happened that all my life I and my best friend and classmate, Sergei Prostakov, had a craving for the topic of morality. At some point, I realized that it was interesting for me in an academic sense.

Back in my bachelor's degree, I decided that I wanted to do science, applied research, and, starting to search, delve into the material, I came to the conclusion that death studies is a completely wild field for Russian science

The concept of death studies in an interdisciplinary format is widely present in the West. If I'm not mistaken, there are about five magazines on this topic published in the UK alone. Some of them have been running since the 70s of the last century, for example, Omega. When I go to their sites, I want to cry : I understand how we generally dropped out of this topic.

In Western anthropology, death studies are mainly devoted to death and dying. , that is, death and dying. People research hospices, explore how respondents experience the process of accepting death , fast or not , how they describe their process of dying in blogs, unite around the problem of death (for example, a person dies and they do something collective). In Russia, the theme of death is largely connected with the cemetery as a location. Death = cemetery. This is an interesting phenomenon.

In Russian society, the attitude towards death is very complex. It is not customary to talk about death: it is a taboo topic. Sociologist Dmitry Rogozin has a wonderful material about his ethnomethodological experiment on this subject and work with respondents. Read.

It is hard for young people to talk about death: they simply do not think about it and do not face it. But for the older generation, death — this is one of the main leitmotifs of reflection. In the language of Robert Lifton and Eric Olson, through such reflections, “symbolic immortality” is acquired.

I think Russia is a big problem : we do not know what and how to talk about death, what to focus on

Death studies does not exist in Russia as a separate discipline. There are disciplines in which death is the subject of study. Folkloristics, sociology, for example. But there are no separate "studies".

There is also the concept of necrosociology, a term that is not particularly used in our country at all. It was invented by a wonderful person L. Ionin, professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. I was in awe of this term at the time: that's what I should dedicate my life to - necrosociology! I really like the concept of death studies, but I also actively support necrosociology. death studies — this is a broader concept, and necrosociology is narrower.

Emotional Approach

In Western anthropological thought, the problem of "tabooism" was to some extent experienced back in the 80s.

Sociologist Renato Rosaldo, along with his wife, was engaged in research on the Philippine hill tribes. In 1982, during one of the field studies, the wife fell off a cliff and died. For a year, Rosaldo was in a terrible state, did not write anything, but then he published an amazing article that caused a huge controversy. First, he wrote that he finally understood what the Filipinos and Longots were telling him. Talking about death and rituals, they all the time mentioned hatred, anger, resentment. As a hardened structuralist, he did not attach any importance to this. And now he realized that he was experiencing similar emotions himself: he was offended and angry with his wife. Rosaldo convinces colleagues that we should talk about emotions, talk about death with emotions. He coined the term "Cultural Force of Emotions". Usually the anthropologist plays the role of an aloof observer, as if the rites of the funeral were the same as the rite of the sowing of bread. Renato Rosaldo states that it is necessary to turn on, experience and not be afraid that academic texts will become more literary and emotional.

In modern Western culture, a funeral is not a ritual, but rather a commemorative act. The funeral process itself has been transformed so much that we can no longer observe what is done with the body as the subject of the rite. Now the body has practically disappeared from the funeral process. When a person begins to die, he is immediately placed in a hospital or hospice, and society does not see the very process of dying. A person dies - the body is immediately placed in the morgue. Then he is given out for burial. The body as a subject is present for a short time at the funeral, and then it is quickly buried. Thus, the phases of separation from the community of the living and inclusion in the community of the dead are leaving, or rather, the phases of separation from the community of the living are seriously transformed. Funerals are increasingly acquiring features not of a rite and ritual with a body, but of a commemorative act.

Nebokakcoffee. en

One day in the summer of 2012, Sergei Prostakov and I walked around the cemetery and talked about the fact that in Russia there is nothing on the topic of death - a dull emptiness. Blogging was even more or less popular back then: LiveJournal had just begun to die, and Facebook had not yet become a platform for intellectual self-expression. And we decided to make a blog. The name “Sky Like Coffee” was quickly born - as a tribute to Yegor Letov (gr. “Civil Defense”), a Fuconian link was quickly found: Foucault has “Archaeology of Knowledge”, and we have “Archaeology of Russian Death”. We decided that we would “dig” in order to understand how and why death is present in this form in Russia.

In addition to collecting ready-made texts, we decided to write something ourselves. There is such an academic preprint format, when a person releases a preprint version for discussion. And we thought that we would also release some things, write about what we think. We realized very quickly that people were not going to discuss, but the blog traffic grew, along with it, the percentage of citations grew. It was obvious that the blog was interesting. It soon became clear that there was interest in a certain environment and that the business had to be somehow continued to develop.

Scientific journal "Archaeology of Russian death"

Several times we tried to raise money for the book, but all attempts failed. We understood that a blog is a blog, but something else needs to be done. However, the idea of ​​a magazine was always in the air.

The turning point for me was a letter from Sergey Kahn, a professor at Dartmouth College and a fellow at the Harvard Center for Slavic Studies. He emigrated to the USA in 1974 and is now engaged in native American studies, studying Indians and teaching death studies. In his letter, he wrote that he did not have the opportunity to follow Russian-language publications, but he follows our blog, because we collect all available information. He wrote that we were great, we did very cool and wonderful. I realized that this was some kind of “sign”, a “gift of fate” and something had to be done with the release of the magazine.

The journal is called Archeology of Russian Death, firstly, because we write in Russian. And secondly, we are trying to write about what is happening in Russia, in the post-Soviet space.

DIY – Do It Yourself

The magazine is my main pride. We were offered to go to a publishing house, fit in somewhere, various help, but we made the magazine completely on the principle of DIY - Do It Yourself, on the principle of open-science. Yes, it turns out "self-made", but it does not mean at all that it is bad. I realized that this format has the right to life when I learned from Alexei Kupriyanov that there is a person in the Western sociological community who does not publish in scientific journals at all, believing that it is long, miserable and meaningless. He has his own blog where he posts his preprints. Since he writes really worthwhile things, everyone knows him, he is often referred to, his blog functions as a Scientific Journal of the Name of Himself.

Our team is fully recruited from my like-minded friends. We work with enthusiasm and for a nominal fee. These are great people to whom I am grateful. First of all, to our designer and layout designer Alena Salmanova, illustrator Karina Nadeeva, editors Maria Vyatchina and Eva Rapoport and, of course, to my colleague, ideological colleague and best friend - Sergey Prostakov. These are brave people.

We are not interested in the HAC list, citation bases and other attributes of scientific bureaucracy

We do everything according to the DIY principle, because no one dictates to us how it should look, what texts to put and which ones not, what to publish, where to register, and so on and so forth. The only thing we get is ISSN to make it easier for the magazine to distribute.

The main thing is that we stand by the fact that we are doing an academic journal, which means that we need an academic text format. That is, the DIY principles outlined by me should not lead to a loss in the quality of the material. In modern Russia, most VAK journals allegedly have a system of peer review, correction, etc., but the quality of publications is at a terrible level. I know no more than 10 humanitarian magazines that I can read in Russian. Most of the St. Petersburg institutions: EUSpb, CISR.

We are faced with the problem that people who want to write about death do not know how and do not know how to do it, how to enter this field. Therefore, our journal, although it is initially positioned as a scientific one and adheres to an academic format, will be more loyal to the texts, because the topic is very complex and new. I myself have to learn a lot to write well.

A journal that the Russian scientific community has not seen

Now the first issue is coming out, and it seems to me that Russia has never had such a scientific journal as we do. Usually, when you pick up a scientific journal, you want to immediately throw it away. The cover, drawn in Paint, paper, layout - just awful. We have made our magazine beautiful, stylish, one that is pleasant to hold in your hands.

Unfortunately, only nine articles are published in the first issue, although more were planned. One of the articles was written by Svetlana Eremeeva, a senior lecturer in the Department of History and Theory of Culture, Faculty of Art History, RSUH. She wrote a polemical text on why death studies are unpopular in Russia, an attempt to say that due to the impossibility of evaluating one's own life, Russians have a low perception of death.

I see the social mission of our magazine as starting to talk about these topics in general.

We raised money for the publication on Planeta.ru. We did not expect that they would give us so much - 105 thousand rubles. We paid a lot for printing. The magazine came out expensive, because we diverged sharply on paper and design. When I calculated the cost of the magazine, I got more than a hundred rubles. On the "Planet" I put a copy for 250 rubles. That is, you buy a magazine and give me the opportunity to print another one at the expense of this money. But it turned out differently: the cost of one issue is now almost 240 rubles. We work to zero.

The current edition of 300 copies is almost sold out. Now about 100-120 pieces will come out of print, which will go to two Moscow stores: Falanster and Tsiolkovsky, and one to Kazan's Smena. An electronic version will be made available to the public. Of course, it's already free.

"Last 30"


The Last 30 is a project entirely invented by journalist and historian Sergei Prostakov and photographer Sergei Karpov .

The main idea is to identify the phenomena of the post-Soviet space

Karpov has long wanted to do documentaries, and Prostakov has always been interested in intellectual and reflective topics. The format of the project was quickly born in the spirit of the Hegelian trinity: the text of a scientist, the text of a journalist and a gallery. After that, they called me, because I am a bit of a historian by education. Karpov is filming, I am interviewing the "social" part, and Prostakov is interviewing the "intellectual" part. This is how we work.

If the project looks like a criticism of the post-Soviet period, then this is not our fault as authors. Our author's position is reduced to the minimum things: the choice of topic and the choice of characters, which is largely not related to the author's position. The selection of scientists and the selection of journalists is also our author's task, and somewhere we formulate a certain discourse around a given topic. But it seems to me that our participation is reduced to a minimum.

We do not claim to be true. We are engaged in oral history, we give people participating in specific phenomena to talk about these phenomena themselves. This is not a dialogue, but a monologue. A person simply tells his story, the way he sees the events taking place

The product of "party" and for "party"

The Last 30 is a study of our past. The social role of the historian is largely to call on people: “Let's talk about it! Let's think about it!"

If we are talking about the need to change Russia, change the context, the situation, then we must understand what happened to us in general before. Because, in my opinion, over the past thirty years we have found ourselves almost at the starting point. The events of the last two years show that Russia has a wildly exposed society. Back in the 80s and 90s, people took to the streets demanding democracy, and now the same people are coming out demanding that it be removed. Although what to clean up already?

The project is not massive and never will be. We always argue about this topic. Karpov, for example, is of the opinion that we must convey the idea of ​​the "Last 30" to the masses, go beyond, and not focus on the conditional "party" of Twitter and Facebook. I always say that it is still a product of the “party” and for the “party”. And that's okay. There's no getting away from it, but there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, the masses cannot be reached, but the intellectuals need it more. After all, it is an intellectual group of people who makes history, sets themes, trends. This is just another reason to talk and think about what is happening to us.

The article discusses the impact of the infrastructure of the funeral services market on the format of modern Russian funerals. According to the author, the spatial features of the infrastructure create a special regime for Russian funerals, transforming...

The article discusses the impact of the infrastructure of the funeral services market on the format of modern
Russian funeral. According to the author, the spatial features of the infrastructure create a special
regime of Russian funerals, turning them into many hours of movement from one object to another, during
which solves local problems of dysfunctionality of the infrastructure. Its breakdown/repair is sacralized
and becomes a necessary and even desirable element of the funeral ritual. Permanent Solution
The author compares infrastructure dysfunctionality with the litanies described by Nancy Rice. At the beginning of the article
provides a brief context for the question of the importance of infrastructure in social practices and specifically in the funeral
deed. The second part reveals her role in contemporary Russian funerals. Article based on materials
ethnographic study of the work of the funeral company.

Research Interests:

The article offers a comparative picture of the emergence and development of the funeral industry in Western countries and in Russia in the focus of state regulation of this area. Attempts have been made to interpret the differences in the formation of national...

The article offers a comparative picture of the emergence and development of the funeral industry in Western countries and in Russia in the focus of state regulation of this area. Attempts have been made to interpret the differences in the formation of national markets for ritual services based on the typology of Tony Walter. In his opinion, there are three ideal models of the funeral market (identified on the basis of who owns the relevant infrastructure) - private, church and state, as well as variations of the mixed model. Walter believes that within each type not only different institutional models are formed, but also specific funeral services characteristic of them develop. The structure of the Russian market of ritual services is considered in a qualitatively new, comparative perspective in the context of the world experience of state regulation of this sphere. Serious limitations of the use of T. Walter's typology in relation to the Russian case in the absence of a normative context similar to the Western one are revealed. As shown by the results of the study conducted by the author, in modern Russia the funeral services market is a "symbiosis" of holders of state infrastructure resources and private business, which fundamentally distinguishes it from Western models. The lack of its own infrastructure leads to the fact that the business of funeral companies is agency and intermediary. They use public infrastructure to generate profit by limiting the consumer's access to relevant services. Thanks to the study, we were able to see that for its development, the funeral industry must be within the framework of regulatory regulation and be subject to regulation. This will make it possible to form the funeral service as a market good, within the framework of which competition and its qualitative development are possible.

Research Interests:

Theoretical and practical developments in the field of anthropology of infrastructure suggest that material objects can have two states - broken and working. Accordingly, the working state of the infrastructure is almost always ...

Theoretical and practical developments in the field of anthropology of infrastructure suggest that material objects can have two states - broken and working. Accordingly, the working state of the infrastructure is almost always considered as normal, and the broken state as subject to correction. However, in a number of cases noted by researchers, the breakdown of an object does not lead to the correction of its state, but becomes the norm and the desired state. The author makes an attempt to reconceptualize the categories of “breakage” and “repair” in relation to his own field research – the market of ritual services. The author shows how breakdown and repair, not pursuing the goal of correcting the technical condition of an object, can become a ritual practice and produce social order. That is, in essence, to be an end in itself. The author considers the possibility of applying the concept of breakage/repair to the analysis of social infrastructure, such as the infrastructure of the funeral industry.

Research Interests:

The article examines the different modes of equity that underpin the practice of granting land for burials in a public municipal cemetery. Ideas of justice are described and interpreted, as well as...

The article discusses the various regimes of justice that lie
at the heart of the practice of providing land for public burials
municipal cemetery. The representations are described and interpreted.
opinions about justice, as well as the impact of cultural and social
context for the formation of such practices. The empirical base of the article
served as a court case considered in the Ulyanovsk Regional Court.
The reason for the beginning of the trial was the conflict between the two
residents of a working settlement for a place on a public municipal
cemetery and for the right to install a fence, a table and a bench on it. Participation
The parties to the dispute, convinced of the legitimacy of mutual claims, turned to
to the court, which found itself in a situation of forced proceedings in the shadow
practices not regulated by law. From a normative perspective,
The main reasons for such practices are considered to be inconsistent
the validity of federal, regional and local regulations,
regulating ritual services. However, it remains
not clarified the influence of cultural and social context. As
conclusions follows two statements. First, modern Russian
the funeral services market is the heir to the Soviet funeral
cases where the main principle was the delegation of local authorities
authority to carry out burials. This led to the fact that
Veteran citizens themselves buried their relatives - they made coffins,
monuments, looking for a place to bury. On the example of a court case
it is shown how the described modes of interaction continue inertly
live in modern Russia. Secondly, the practice of allocating a site in a cemetery is a complex form of bargaining and contract based on lo-
kal tradition. As a result, such a form becomes a resource of justification.
and forms a special regime of justice. As part of the study
shows how the different regimes of justice collide.

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Ethnographic observation, as a method, is widely used in studies of the funeral industry. However, researchers practically do not mention and do not consider the emerging field difficulties associated, among other things, with actions ...

Ethnographic observation, as a method, is widely used in studies of the funeral industry. However, researchers practically do not mention and do not consider the emerging field difficulties associated, among other things, with the actions of the ethnographer himself. As a rule, the arising difficulties in pronouncing the theme of death and the deep sensitivity of the field are explained by the "taboo of death" and the cultural "fear of death". Ethical problems that confront the ethnographer, many researchers prefer to avoid altogether. IN
Within the framework of this reflective essay, an attempt is made to comprehend the experience of such field work. Described
some complexities of the ethnography of the ritual market and emerging ethical and methodological contradictions.

Research Interests:

The struggle of representatives of the Western funeral industry with professional stigmatization has led to the fact that the funeral business has become open, public and socially responsible. At the same time, the Russian funeral services market is still...

The struggle of representatives of the Western funeral industry with professional stigmatization has led to the fact that the funeral business has become open, public and socially responsible. At the same time, the Russian funeral services market is still shrouded in frightening myths and negative stereotypes. Representatives of the Russian funeral industry avoid any form of publicity. This leads to open stigmatization of the profession. Why is there such a situation? Is it possible to assume that stigmatization is supported by the professional community itself? Based on the author's ethnographic notes, collected in a field diary, as a result of a participant observation conducted throughout the year in one of the central regions of Russia, an attempt is made to answer these questions. The article consists of three parts. First, common models of the funeral market will be shown using the example of such countries as the USA, France and Sweden, and the fundamental differences between the Russian model will be outlined. In the second part of the article, the author describes the regional ritual agency and its owner. The third part of the article characterizes ordinary workers in the funeral services market. As a conclusion, the following is proposed: the Russian market of funeral services can be interpreted in terms of David Stark's concept of uncertainty. In the focus of the regional funeral market, uncertainty is expressed in controlled infrastructure dysfunction, weak and spontaneous institutionalization, and the prevalence of informal practices in supporting network connections. In addition to this, the professional structure itself is quite closed to the entry of new players and is hierarchized according to the criminal principle. Thus, the very structure of the ritual market is capable of effective functioning only if the status of uncertainty is preserved. This state is maintained with the help of information control, and stigmatization is a tool for maintaining the professional structure.

Research Interests:

The Russian market of funeral services is fundamentally different from the European and American models. In Russia, there are no private funeral homes, private cemeteries and private mortuaries - all infrastructure belongs to the state. Wherein...

The Russian market of funeral services is fundamentally different from the European and American models. In Russia, there are no private funeral homes, private cemeteries and private mortuaries - all infrastructure belongs to the state. At the same time, the funeral market is a source of shadow and illegal economic and social practices. Despite this state of affairs, the funeral services market has not undergone systematic and structural reform for a long time. Can we call the current situation the status quo? Can funeral infrastructure create special social and power relationships? What role does the process of managing its technical condition play? The article argues that the appearance of dysfunctional infrastructure and its nominal presence in a "broken" form is of fundamental importance for the functioning of the Russian regional market of funeral services. “Breakdown” as an epistemic model for describing the funeral infrastructure and ontological possibilities for its “repair” create a unique constellation of a “broken-working” network, in which both states in their pure form are fiction. For representatives of the regional authorities, the control of the funeral infrastructure and its being in a broken state allows maintaining the loyalty of local agents. For private funeral companies, this state of affairs allows them to avoid serious investments in their own infrastructure and sell its "repair" and access to such facilities as a service.

Research Interests:

Brief preface The discussion of this issue of the journal, in accordance with the theme of the issue - "The Living and the Dead", is devoted to such an already established area of ​​research in foreign science as "death studies". It was easy for the participants in the discussion...

Short preface
The discussion of this issue of the journal, in accordance with the theme of the issue - "The Living and the Dead", is devoted to such an already established area of ​​research in foreign science as "death studies". It was easy to identify the participants in the discussion - these were the editors and participants of the new and interesting journal Archeology of Russian Life.
The questions were developed by S.V. Mokhov, D.V. Gromov and E.V. Vdovchenkov. The purpose of the discussion is twofold. On the one hand, to show the problematic field of "death studies" and the experience of three domestic anthropologists in this field. On the other hand, a kind of intellectual provocation was carried out - these
the same questions, designed for the study of "death studies" in modern society, were asked to the medievalist. Since medieval studies are closely connected with anthropology and it has its own rich experience in solving such problems, Yu.E. Arnautova turned out to be detailed and informative.
Discussion questions:
"Death studies" as a field of research - formed or not? How does the situation in domestic science differ from the situation abroad?
What areas of "death studies" are underdeveloped? Most promising? What interesting works on the topic could you name?
Is personal experience of death important among death studies investigators? What are the problems associated with entering the field? Code of Ethics?
Does our society avoid the issue of death, distance itself from it, as many studies claim? Is there a taboo of death as a problem?
There is no doubt that ideas about death and afterlife differ among representatives of different faiths and worldviews. Is it possible to identify differences for people of different sex, age, education, social status, etc.?
How does the development of mass media and the Internet affect our understanding of death? How might our lives and deaths change with advances in technology and medicine?
Key words: death studies, death studies, anthropology, modern Russian science, mass media, medieval studies, memoria.
Members:
Vdovchenkov Evgeny Viktorovich, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Archeology and History of the Ancient World, Institute of History and International
relations of the Southern Federal University.
Mokhov Sergey Viktorovich, editor-in-chief of the journal Archeology of Russian Death, MA in history (MVSES/The University of Manchester), postgraduate student of the School of Sociological Sciences, National Research University Higher School
Economics” (NRU HSE).
Eremeeva Svetlana Anatolyevna, Candidate of Cultural Studies, Associate Professor of the Department of History and Theory of Culture, Russian State University for the Humanities.
Sokolova Anna Dmitrievna, candidate of historical sciences, researcher,
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. N.N. Miklouho-Maclay.
Arnautova Yulia Evgenievna, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher, Head. Department of Historical Anthropology and History of Everyday Life, Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Discussion about Significance of "Death Studies" in the Modern Science
Short introduction Discussion featured in this journal issue is situated in line with the umbrella topic “The living and the dead” and concerns the sphere that is already well established in the western research, i.e. Death studies.
It was easy to invite participants for the discussion; they are editors and contributors of the new interesting journal “Archaeology of the Russian Life”. Questions have been prepared by S. Mokhov, D. Gromov and E. Vdovchenkov. The objectives of the discussion are twofold. On the
one hand, it is to show the problematics of the “Death studies” and to share experience of three Russian anthropologists in this field, on the other hand, it is a kind of intellectual provocation
as the same questions devised for the “Death studies” in the modern society were targeted at a medievalist. Medieval studies are closely related to anthropology and have vast experience in resolving such issues, therefore, the answer of Yu. Arnautova was detailed and informative.
Questions of discussion are as follows:
Have the "Death studies" been already formed as a field of study? In what extent is the situation in the Russian research different from the situation abroad?
What directions of research in the "Death studies" have not been developed enough? What are the most promising? What kind of interesting researches on this matter could you name?
Is personal experience of encountering death important for a researcher of the "Death studies"? What are the problems of entering into the field? Is there any Ethics Code?
Does our society try to avoid death topics? Does it try to disassociate itself from death topics as many researchers claim? Is the tabooed nature of the death topic a problem?
No doubt the concepts of death and the life after death are different for different confessions and worldviews, but would it be possible to single out differences of this matter for people of different gender, age, education, social standing, etc?
Does the development of mass media and internet affect our concept of death? How can life and death be changed in the case of technologies and medicine development?
Keywords: "Death studies", Anthropology, modern Russian science, media, Medieval Studies, memoria.
Disputants:
Vdovchenkov Evgeny V. – Candidate of Science (History), Associate Professor of the Department of Archeology and Ancient History, Institute of History and International Relations, Southern Federal University.
Mokhov Sergei V. – editor-in-chief in the Death studies journal «Russian Archeology of Death», MA in History (University of Manchester), a graduate student of the School of Social Sciences at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics .
Eremeeva Svetlana A. – PhD in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor, Department of History and Theory of Culture, Russian State University for Humanities.
Sokolova Anna D. – Candidate of Science (History), researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Science.
Arnautova Julia E. – Doctor of Science (History), Senior Researcher, the Head of the Department of Historical Anthropology and the History of Everyday Life, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science