Words and Silences, livre ebook

Indiana University Press is pleased to make this book freely available as an Open Access monograph. To read, please visit https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/projects/words-and-silences.Words and Silences tells the story of an extraordinary group of independent Nenets reindeer herders in the northwest Russian Arctic. Under socialism these nomads managed to avoid the Soviet state and its institutions of collectivization, but soon after the atheist regime collapsed, while some staunchly resisted, many of them became fervent fundamentalist Christians. By exploring differing concepts of how traditional and convert Nenets use and define words and of the meanings they ascribe to the withholding of speech, Laur Vallikivi shows how a local form of global Christianity has emerged through intricate negotiations of self, sociality, and cosmology. Moving beyond studies of modernization and globalization that have all-too-predictable outcomes for indigenous peoples, Words and Silences invites us to view not only religious devotees, but words themselves, as agents of a complex and ongoing transformation.List of Maps and FiguresPreface and AcknowledgmentsNotes on Transliteration, Translation, and Bible CitationsPART I: REINDEER NOMADS AND REFORMERSIntroduction1. Dynamics of Avoidance and EngagementPART II: CONVERSION OF PEOPLE, DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF SPIRITS2. Trajectories of Conversion3. Baptist Missionaries on the Edge4. Destructive PersuasionPART III: SPEAKING AND SILENCE5. Silence and Binding Words6. Speaking Saves, Silence Damns7. Pure SubjectsConclusionMain CharactersGlossary of Selected Nenets and Russian WordsNotesReferencesIndex