Museumification as a method of construction of modern ethno-cultural space among the Chuvashes in the Tobol river basin in Tyumen region

Abstract

The article is dedicated to a cultural and anthropological description of the process of museumification among a Chuvash ethnolocal group in the Tobol river basin in Tyumen region. The paper aims to show how museumification becomes a technology of construction of modern ethno-cultural space in the group under consideration. At the end of the XX century, an urgent demand for ethnic self-determination and preservation of cultural traditions appeared among the Chuvash people in the region. In this regard, processes of ethnic consolidation activated. Museums and museum rooms in various villages of the Southern part of the region gradually start to become centers of such consolidation. They contain artifacts of the culture of daily living activities of the Chuvashes. In course of time, museumification activities of such centers rise to a new level. They begin to have a significant influence on the formation of the ethnic and cultural space of the Chuvash people in the Tobol river basin in Tyumen region through the preservation of traditions, and innovations in cultural transmission. Similarly, private museumification begins to affect the ethno-cultural space. This is a new phenomenon for the group under consideration, and it has been not previously studied.

Keywords

• the Chuvash people
• the Tobol river basin in Tyumen region
• museumification
• ethno-cultural tradition
• ethnic processes