Words and Silences, livre ebook

Indiana University Press is pleased to make this book freely available as an Open Access monograph. 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 Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments
Notes on Transliteration, Translation, and Bible CitationsPART I: REINDEER NOMADS AND REFORMERS
Introduction
1. Dynamics of Avoidance and EngagementPART II: CONVERSION OF PEOPLE, DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF SPIRITS
2. Trajectories of Conversion
3. Baptist Missionaries on the Edge
4. Destructive PersuasionPART III: SPEAKING AND SILENCE
5. Silence and Binding Words
6. Speaking Saves, Silence Damns
7. Pure Subjects
Conclusion
Main Characters
Glossary of Selected Nenets and Russian Words
Notes
References
Index