Valery Tishkov

A dramatic transition took place in the Russian humanities and social sciences since 1991 when the dominant ethnos paradigm was replaced by constructivist interpretations of ethnicity. A new discipline of socio-cultural anthropology emerged in research and education institutions. Meanwhile, primordial approaches associated with the figures of Lev Gumilev and Yulian Bromley are still alive and enjoy enthusiastic response in history, political science, philosophy, and sociology. In spite of this neoprimordialism, sociologists, archaeologists, psychologists, and geneticists, in cooperation with anthropologists, are trying to build interdisciplinary bridges to avoid the pitfalls of ethnos and ethnogenesis theories. Contemporary anthropology and ethnology in Russia are in search of a new synthesis that would allow for the better understanding of today's cultural complexities and human social and cultural coalitions beyond the ethnicity paradigm.