21 Chapter 1. Performing Ethnicity: Buryat Ethnofestivals … memory plays a key role in identity and integration; it serves in the building and strengthening of social bonds among those who see themselves as a small community. Therefore, in the situation in which the Buryat nation finds itself, a clear tie between culture and politics is emphasized, something manifested (among other ways) in the formative role of the ethnic elite. It is this group which strives to direct the cultural processes as well as to create and articulate distinct traits of the ethnic culture (Nowicka 2007: 490). An example of such engagement is the organization of Buryat ethnofestivals and public events whose participants accent their identity both as performers on stages and as viewers and participants in the audience. Under contemporary social conditions, new ways of transmitting culture bear special significance. Here the focus will be on the latest techniques, adapted to postmodernity, which are especially meaningful for the present-day Buryat society. These new means of transmission are part and parcel of an overriding goal: to build a Buryat national community as well as to anchor it in the Mongolian community overall. Invented, rediscovered, or created tradition In the 1960s and 1970s, social scientists were drawn to processes of ethnic revival in the USA and Western Europe (Smith 1981; Wearne 1996). However, in Central Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, these processes began only after the fall of communism, drawing the attention of, among others, Polish anthropologists (Nowicka & Wyszyński 1996; Zapaśnik & Morochojewa 2000; Zajączkowski 2001; Halemba 2006; Głowacka-Grajper 2015; Nowicka 2016). Analyses of renewal or revival of tradition delve into various aspects of the phenomenon: to its creativity (Hobsbawm & Ranger [1983] 2012), to the economic aspect, such as tourism (Comaroff & Comaroff 2009), and to interpretation in terms of ethnic performance and ethnic rebirth through social practices (Clammer 2015). One of the manifestations of ethnic revival is the ethnocultural festival, which expresses culture and neutralizes ethnicity through folklorization (Foxall 2014). In this process it does happen that old rituals change their original content and take on the form of ethnic symbols (Weidman 2010). In the case of Buryats, there is yet another factor. On the one hand, there is a threat to identity and culture due to the overpowering impact of Russian culture moored in state political structures. On the other hand, there is the infiltration by foreign, mostly Western cultures—globalization. The reaction of
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