Ethnosociology in modern contexts: on the personality of L.M. Drobizheva and relevance of her ideas

The article examines fundamental and pressing issues in ethnosociology: firstly, the issues brought to light by the dramatic transformations that occurred in society in the post-Soviet period; secondly, the ones posed by one of the founders of Soviet ethnosociology, L.M. Drobizheva. The author provides the scholar’s personal profile compiled from an analysis of her creative legacy and personal impressions gained from the interraction with her, participation in joint discussions, and corresponding with her. In addition to Leokadia Drobizheva’s personal qualities pointed out by her students and colleagues (friendliness, a spirit of peacemaking and collectivism, and mutual support), the author highlights the following qualities: her distinctive professional style, high academic and purely human standards, nobility combined with firmness in defending her positions on fundamental issues, her social significance, and the sound prognosticity of her thoughts and actions. The article shows that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a new socioeconomic system were accompanied by a rejection of domestic traditions of ethnology and the assertion of a methodological and conceptual framework of social and humanistic studies, including ethnosociology, borrowed from the West. Anthropologism and constructivism with a focus on studying ethnicity and identity became dominant here. In those circumstances, L.M. Drobizheva identified the need to understand the specific subject matter of ethnosociology as an important condition for its preservation and development. Through the analysis of her views and by outlining the existing challenges for ethnosociology, the author cautions against the danger of turning ethnosociology into a tool for solving specific political problems and against absolutizing issues of ethnicity and identity within its field of study. He insists that it is the ethnic phenomenon as a whole and the ethnos as its bearer that are ethnology’s object of study, not ethnicity, which is their particular manifestation. It is proposed to define ethnosocial processes in their subjectivity, complexity and systematicity as the subject of ethnosociology.