Call for papers for the special issue of the journal “State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad” on India (No. 3, 2025)Theme of the issue: Deep India on the Eve of Big Changes: Society, Religions, LanguagesWe invite you to participate in the special issue of our journal (#3, 2025) devoted to India.The
guest editor is
Svetlana I. Ryzhakova, Ph.D. in Ethnology and Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, full member of the Indian Anthropological Society.
📚This issue is aimed at ethnographic research of the broad masses of the middle strata of the Indian population, those who can be united within the concept of
“deep India” and who are still very little studied in social and humanitarian science, although in general the literature devoted to this problematic is extremely extensive. We are talking about the most voluminous segment of Indians, whose
socio-normative and life-supporting practices have certain features of similarity (while preserving a number of ethnic and status differences), and whose life values largely create the integrity of the Indian nation in the socio-political sense of the word, primarily the rural population of India, as well as certain groups of urban population.
🔝One of the essential features of “deep India” is the desire for endogamy, for
social segmentation and the
construction of social hierarchy, and for self-reproduction through the socialization of children into the norms and traditions of a particular, own community. Conservative, stabilizing tendencies form the phenomenon of “deep India”, while modernization processes are associated with overcoming limitations, with the creation of
new technologies and new social relations. At the same time, the message of the various religious movements and sects of South Asia was mostly universal, intended to overcome different social borders.
🔍Analysis of interrelationships and boundaries of individual groups in socially segmented and complexly organized societies is one of the most important problems of our time, both in academic research and applied disciplines. The study of practices and skills of social interaction, ways of spreading knowledge about each other among different segments of society of middle classes and castes of different states of India,
mutual adaptation to traditions, customs and practices that differ among different groups, will allow us to see and understand the mechanisms of social transformation, preservation of stability,
conflict resolution.
🎓We invite authors, and first of all anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, scholars of religious studies, linguists, whose articles will be devoted to the
study of everyday life and social peculiarities of, firstly, the inhabitants of villages and rural India in general, secondly, the population of small towns with close ties to the village, and thirdly, different groups, including people from megacities - migrants from villages. All these groups are united by the fact that they turn out to be carriers of so-called
traditionalism - a system of life values, social patterns and
models of life-supporting and socio-normative culture. We welcome both historical works, especially those based on archival material, and works based on field research and personal observations of the authors.
✈️Please send your proposals in the form of
abstracts (250-400 words) together with
CV to the address of the editorial board (
[email protected]) and guest editor Svetlana Ryzhakova (
[email protected]) by
March 1, 2025. If the topic is approved, articles of about
5000-7000 words (30-50 thousand symbols) should be sent to the Editorial Board and guest editor by
April 15, 2025 for further review. The rules for the design of materials are presented
here.
